


All Partial Evil

by ButNothing



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Drama, F/M, Gen, Nordic Noir - Freeform, Science Fiction, alternative universe, non-canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:35:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 97,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButNothing/pseuds/ButNothing
Summary: It won't feel the same anyhow. It never does.All things change.This is the story of the origins of the Wolverine; of the nature of the beast. How do we come to be who we are, at this moment in time? Is there free will, can we change or are we imprisoned by our destiny? What is the nature of evil or of compassion and redemption; what are the limits of forgiveness?





	1. The Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Caveat lector - reader be aware. This will be a long story.
> 
> In the X2 Stryker says to Wolverine: "If you really knew about your past, what kind of person you where, the work we did together. People don’t change, Wolverine. You were animal then, you’re an animal now. I just gave you claws." What if he didn't lie at all? What if Stryker didn't exaggerate at all but really told the truth? What then? What did he mean by that? What was the work they did together? And do people change? This story is my take on that. 
> 
> First: English is not my native language and I don't live in a English speaking country, so forgive me all my grammatical errors etc. If you have something to say about the language, please email ( I would really appreciate all suggestions you might have), but don't bother about it in the reviews, OK?
> 
> Second: This is an alternative universe. Don't expect to know how things work or how they should work. "These are my rules. I made them up." (George Carlin) So don't bother to post reviews about that either. I already KNOW it's not canon, even if it is based on the movieverse. But if you do have something to say about the plot per se, feel free to do so. I would appreciate it. Tell me, how do you find my universe?
> 
> Third: As this is an AU story, don't expect to know Wolverine/Logan. My rules and all, remember? ;)
> 
> Fourth: I sincerely hope you enjoy it, as I have something to say about being a mutant and about Wolverine.
> 
> About the rating: This is a violent reality. There will be blood, tears and swearing; death and despair before there is hope.
> 
> The timeline: The story begins years before the first X-Men movie about a year after Logan broke out of the Alkaline Lake facility. I will follow loosely the time line set by the X-Men trilogy but my story is focused more on what happens during time outside the movies and not so much on what happens in the movies. Unless I want to rewrite parts of them. Which I do. You'll figure it out as you go. Logan did too.

* * *

**1\. The Choice**

I found him lying prone on the forest floor half covered in mud, leaves and brown dried blood. His hands were bent under his chest, as if he had been holding something when he fell. His arms were empty now, clutching onto something that might not have been there at all.

  
I sat down on my haunches a few steps away waiting for the right time to approach him. The earth beneath me was moist from recent rains and I could feel the dormant life in it beginning to awake from Winter's Sleep. I let my consciousness merge into the surrounding forest and I felt the scent of his body in my nose. The wound on his side was almost healed now, but the damp smell of fresh blood was still on him. I drifted past it and felt the wound closing, slowly, slowly. It shouldn't be long now.

  
His body stirred slightly. I moved closer and laid my hand on his upper arm before he was fully awake so that my presence would not come as a surprise to him. It wasn’t hard to tell he was not a man who appreciated surprises. I felt his muscles move and then a deep breath. I moved back to where I had been and squatted down again.

  
He pushed himself up a bit, then rested on his elbows looking at his knuckles and chest. He shook his head and pushed himself onto his right side while being cautious of his now only bruised left flank. He was still slightly disoriented, but nonetheless his eyes were fixed on me, locked on target, and I saw him thinking hard, assembling his mind back into a coherent whole. I gave him all the time he needed and remained still with my arms on my knees, looking at him passively. He pulled his legs under him after a while and sat up leaning heavily onto his right hand. He bent his head a bit and took two or three shallow breaths. The wound was obviously still bothering him, but his eyes never left me.

  
"So," he said with a low, hoarse voice, "How long have I been out cold for?"

  
"Hard to say exactly. Maybe a day. Or a bit more."

  
He remained silent for a while measuring me with his eyes. I gave him a small reassuring smile, but otherwise held my passive stance.

  
"And you just happened to stumble upon me while, what - pickin' berries?"

  
"No, you're right," I replied with a smile, "My friends found you and sent me word."

  
"Friends?"

  
"Aye. I reckon they were worried about you. And a bit startled too, I guess."

  
"And where are your friends now?" he said with a sarcastic smirk, "They just left you here all alone with a dyin' man and went home?"

  
I had to smile again, though not at him. "I suppose so. My friends are easily distracted and have more important things on their minds right now."

  
"So, it's just you now." A statement, not a question.

  
"Aye, just me," I said remaining motionless on my heels. I took the canteen from my belt, opened it and drank a mouthful. "You must be thirsty," I said and leaned forward placing the canteen on the ground near him. He waited until I had moved back before picking it up. He drank with small slow sips holding pauses between swallows. He screwed the cap back on when he was done and held the canteen out toward me.

  
"Thanks. I needed that."

  
I knew what he was up to when I reached for the canteen, but his speed was still astonishing. He dropped the canteen when I was just about to take it, grabbed my throat and drew me down onto my knees.

  
"Well," he sneered at me, "I ain't dead yet." He twisted my head sideways with his steel hard grip and felt his way through my belt and pockets with his left hand. He pulled my knife out and threw it far into the undergrowth. I kept my hands slightly raised away from my sides, palms open toward him.

  
"There really is no need for this."

  
"I'll be the judge of that," he growled and twisted my head even further. "I could just wring your fuckin' neck, you know." There was no doubt about the malicious tone, but I more felt than heard a hint of underlying hesitation.

  
"I know," I whispered through my teeth. His thumb was pressing hard against my artery just below the jawbone and I felt the pulse of my own circulation.

  
Suddenly the malevolence in him subsided. He tipped his head curiously and sniffed the air. He turned my head to stare straight into my eyes with a hard frown.

  
"But I might have other ideas to try out before that," he said with a sinister smirk, but the emotion was not there to back up the words. I met his eye and let my hands rest on my thighs. The evening sun was warm on my back, but the shadows had already grown cold.

  
"It's going to be a cold night," I said, not wanting to spend a cold spring night outdoors. He wrinkled his brow in sudden puzzlement and, for a fleeting moment, I was not so sure about this after all, but then he laughed wholeheartedly.

  
"You really are somethin' else." His expression turned grave. "I'm gonna let you breath for a while longer, honey." He tightened his grip around my throat. "But don't get any ideas. Your sad life is mine to take." He held on for a while longer before letting me go. He sat back and for the first time looked away from me. He flexed his fists, rubbed his knuckles and let his hand drop to his lap.

  
I let my eyes rest on his broad shoulders for a little while, then inhaled deeply and drifted past the clothing. I touched briefly the dry, leathery skin before I delved deeper into him.

  
I found traces of constant hunger in his muscles. Signs of repeated injuries, still healing. Strain, dehydration, malnutrition. His body had opted to scavenge itself when there had not been enough food and water to sustain the regeneration. It could be your gift, your cure that kills you, I thought while moving through the veins and tendons. Nature plays it cruelest jokes on us.

  
Then there was something else. Something deep inside him. Something that was not supposed to be there, but that nevertheless was part of him. Something hard. Cold. An electric taste.

  
I fled from him. The muscles on my shoulders convulsed violently forcing me to gasp sharply. I felt like choking, fought to breathe again as an other spasm shook my sides. I retched and pushed my hands against the ground in need to feel something sound and solid. The earth's warm firmness took a hold of my hands and seeped upward through my arms. The spinning stopped and I opened my eyes. He was looking at me with a touch of curiosity in his eyes.

  
"Feelin' a bit giddy, are we?"

  
"Ah'll be. Fine. In a while." My sides hurt and I wondered whether I had fractured a rib with my stupidity. Christ, it hurt to breathe out, so I knew I must had. I decided not to take a closer look. An inward delve would cut me off from the world for the duration and it wouldn't make much of a difference anyway. Instead I let the muscles in the small of my back do the breathing. It did lessen the pain a little as the pressure against the fractured rib decreased. It should be fine in a few hours anyway. I managed to sit upright again.

  
He in turn picked up the canteen and offered it to me. "You must be thirsty," he aped me mockingly. I laughed and took the canteen. He smiled sardonically while I drank.

  
"We need more water," I said as I clasped the canteen back to my belt. "There's only a quarter of a canteen left." He frowned thoughtfully looking past me with narrow eyes.

  
"Alright," he said focusing at me, "What the hell, lets get some water." He smiled and prepared to push himself up.

  
"Do you mind if I get my back knife first?" I said. It was a good knife, well crafted and it fit my hand perfectly. No harm in asking, I thought.

  
"Yeah, why not." He stood up and started to brush the muck off from his clothes. His wound appeared to be completely healed now. It probably wasn’t but I suppose he wasn’t going to let it show. I got up and walked to the direction he had thrown the knife to. I found it gleaming amongst the green but leafless blueberry stalks and picked it up. I heard his steps behind me, but he snatched my hand by the wrist before I had the chance to say anything.

  
“Your life is still mine to take, don't you forget it," he hissed into my ear while holding my neck with his left hand. He pushed me forward forcing me to stoop.

  
"I know."

  
"Good, 'cause you’re gonna take me home with you." I watched the back of the hand that was gripping my wrist and the taste of steel filled my mouth again. There was something in those hands, moving, itching to penetrate the skin. I twitched, fighting off the beginning of an involuntary delve. He pulled me up into close contact with him.

  
"In case you get any ideas about me and that knife." He changed his hold to take my fist and the knife in it. "I let you keep the blade, 'cause there's nothing you can do with it." He moved my hand to his thigh and drove the blade all the way into the muscle. He pulled the knife out and blood poured from the wound. "This," he said and dipped his thumb into the blood, "is all your little knife can do." He smeared the blood onto my cheek with a slow stroke. "Just remember," he breathed into my ear, "it could just as easily be your blood, on my face."

  
I was beginning to doubt my dream.

  
  
* * *  
  
_In this dream I'm walking in a forest of tall aspens, their silver grey trunks rising far above me like living rows of balustrades. A tender summer breeze moves through the forest and the sound of quivering aspen leaves follows in its wake. The light is soft and warm, and I am filled with serenity._

  
_I come to the edge of the forest and I stop, unable to walk any further. Beyond the trees a sun-burnt expanse of fields shimmers in the haze of a hard august sun so bright, that it obscures the view. I squint my eyes in the sun as a vague form appears in the distance. I wait and I see that it is a dark man with broad shoulders walking toward me. The sun's smouldering warmth burns my face, but the forest behind me is cool and soothing and I hold my ground._

  
_Burning heat ripples the figure and, as I blink, the man disappears and in his place I see a huge war hound with long black hackles. It jogs effortlessly until it reaches the fringe of the forest where it sits down, remaining in the sun, but looking intensely at me. Its mouth is open, the long tongue hangs out and I notice streaks of blood in its ruffled coat. It licks its lips, swallows and turns its head to look back into the blaze, but then turns back to me, its auburn eyes burning._

  
_I turn my back to the dog and the fields and start walking back into the heart of the forest. I stop when I feel a cold wet muzzle in my hand and I turn around. The dark man is standing right behind me with auburn eyes gleaming behind a long ruffled hair. I don't see his face, but then again, I never do. And the war hound is there too, inside him, and I can't tell whether it is the man that I am seeing or the dog. But they both share the same eyes._

  
_I wake up._

  
_I lay awake in my bed watching through the window how bands of coloured lights weave their way across the winter night. The dancing reds and greens keep me focused as I memorise my dream._

  
_The auburn eyes stay with me through that winter and when the crow taps at my window one morning, I once again feel the muzzle in my hand._

  
  
* * *

  
It took us good thirteen hours to cover the distance between the grove where I had found him, and my home. He followed my lead through the rugged landscape, but insisted on deciding the pace himself. The pace and the harshness of land took their toll on him, but he didn't let it show. The only sign was our slowing gait.

  
He did allow one stop, a short rest long over due, in the wee hours of the night. I sat down and leaned my back against an old, twisted pine-tree. It was a crisp, starlit night, and I had ended up not minding having to spend it outdoors. The stars were so bright that I felt being pulled to them, to the sky, to the space beyond. I closed my eyes and merged with the tree. I didn't want to go.

  
The darkness was beautifully silent. The pine swayed with the soft wind, rustling, and I moved with it. Night's little creatures moved unseen amidst the undergrowth and I followed their small, warm bodies on their nightly journeys.

  
I found a larger creature moving quietly towards us in the darkness. I opened my eyes to find him already on his feet staring intensely into the woods. I got up and walked to him.

  
A lonesome wolf slipped out from the shadows. It halted and looked at us warily, keeping its head low and moving from side to side. It took few tentative steps towards us and stopped again to sniff the air.

  
The man next to me crouched slightly, ready to fight the wolf if need be. I laid my hand gently on his forearm. He shied at my touch, but I didn't let him break the contact.

  
"No," I whispered, "hold still. Wait." He eyed the wolf for a while longer, but then relaxed and straightened up. The wolf began to circle us coming slowly closer.

  
"It's just curious," I said watching the approaching animal. "It smells the death in you." His arm winced under my hand and he glanced sharply at me. I payed no attention.

  
Suddenly the wolf jogged straight at and past us, sniffing his leg in passing. It continued toward the trees, but paused briefly to give us an indifferent look over its shoulder before disappearing into the dark.

  
I stayed there looking at the tree line and chuckled. "How appropriate," I thought out loud. He looked at me. "A wolf at the hour of the wolf. How about that." A quick smile flashed across his face.

  
We set forth once again.

  
* * *  
  
I stepped first to the porch and walked forward to unlock the door. He kept his fist between my shoulder blades through all that and thrusted me in when I opened the front door.  
  
"Stop. Stay." I did as he told and stood there in the middle of my living room. He walked to the table and shoved a chair next to me. "Sit." I did.

  
He sniffed the air and looked around. "Give me the keys to your gun locker." I pulled the key ring from my jacket pocket and tossed it to him. He snatched it from midair and pushed the keys in to his jeans' pocket. "The spare keys?"

  
"In that tin box on the third shelf." He put those in his pocket as well. He turned around and walked across the dimly lit room to me; the shutters were still closed. He came to stand in front of me, arms crossed, looking thoughtfully down at me.

  
"I'm gonna eat somethin' and then I'm off," he said. He rubbed his eye with the back of his hand and sighed with arms akimbo. "Haven't decided what I'm gonna do with you though."

  
He turned to leave, halted putting his head to one side as if to say something more, hesitated and took off to the kitchen. Half way across the room his knees gave way under him and he fell heavily to the floor. He tried to get up, but his legs just didn't seem to have the strength for it. He kept on trying, movements turning frantic, but then he slumped back to the floor and gave up.

  
"Shit."

  
I stood up and walked around him. I sat down on my haunches in front of him and lifted my hand to hold his shoulder, but he furiously shoved my hand away, a low growl rising from his throat. His muscles started to shiver.

  
"What the hell's goin' on?" he asked no-one in particular. I closed my eyes and delved in him briefly.

  
"You're dying." His eyes shot up at me in disbelief. "Your nervous system is collapsing."

  
"The hell I am."

  
"Well, not right now you're not, but eventually yes." He looked down.

  
"No fuckin' way," he said shaking his head.

  
"Yes."

  
"Shut the fuck up!" He aimed a punch at my jaw, but the stroke went wide landing to my left shoulder. "I can't die!"

  
"You can and you will." He grabbed me by the arm and tried desperately to stare me down.

  
"You don't fuckin' get it. I'm not able to die," he growled. I said nothing. He let my arm go and pulled back.

  
"You’re serious," he said half asking, half reassuring himself. He fell silent and stared at the floor boards. "I don't get it."

  
I changed into a squat and rested my chin on my shoulder.

  
"I've tried every damn way to kill myself and every time I've woken up all healed. And yesterday I thought that's it, I can't die, and now you," he looked accusingly at me. "Now you're tellin' me that hell yeah, I actually am dying." His eyes narrowed and he started to shake all over in rage. I stood up to get out of his way.

  
"Looks to me like you finally got what you wanted," I said. He winced at that. "It will take time, a long time, before you do die, before your healing ability does enough damage while trying to repair your body. Like I said, your nervous system is fucked up and it’s beginning to give up on you. All those the injuries you have inflicted on yourself recently and the lack of food and dehydration combined, your body is eating itself out - kind of." He seemed to be considering that. The shaking died out and he looked tired. I sat down again.

  
"How long will it take?" he said after a long silence.

  
"I would bet my money on a month." He turned his head away. "But only if you stop eating and try not to drink. Starvation is always an option.” I sighed. "It won't be nice." He turned his head to look at me.

  
"Well, you gotta take what's been given," he said smiling mordantly. I saw the old hound in his auburn eyes and I knew what my dream was all about. I looked away.

  
"There is another way," I said softly. He held his breath. "There is another way to kill you."

  
I got up not giving him a chance to say anything, went to the kitchen and picked up the water-filled bucket and the enamel scoop from the counter. I walked back to the murky living room and laid the bucket on the floor.

  
"But it's something you can't do yourself," I told to him, voice level. "You have to trust me to do it for you." He was a little taken aback by that.

  
"Alright," he said after a while, "What is it?"

  
I went to the back of the room and pushed an iron-laced travel trunk aside. I kneeled down to the floor, put my finger through a knothole in a floorboard and lifted it up. I reached under the floor with my hand and my fingers found the edge of an old wooden box. There was an other box in that blackness, similar to this one, but pushed all the way back, almost out of reach. I thought about the war hound and stuck to my plan. I pulled the box closer at hand out.

  
I sat down on my knees and placed the long box between us on the floor. The mahogany coloured lacquer shined softly as a beam of light stole through the shutters. I opened the box and took out an elongated object bound in silk, laid that carefully next to the box, closed the box and moved it to my side. I gently unbound the silk to reveal a sword in a black lacquer scabbard. I stood up and drew the blade. Light reflected from the steel and danced on the walls. His eyes were fixed on the swords edge.

  
"This is Shiokaze," I said lovingly. It had been such a long time since I last felt the grained ray skin on my palm. I lowered the blade and his eyes followed, but he then turned to look at me.

  
"You're thinkin' about beheadin' me with that," he said.

  
"Aye." I looked at my sword.

  
"I don't think that anythin' can cut through my bones," he said with eyes back at the sword. "You'd have to cut right between my vertebrae."

  
"That is not a problem."

  
"You have done this before?" he said half knowing the answer.

  
"Yes." I remembered another forest, another continent and another man kneeling before me.

  
"You sure you can make the cut?"

  
"Positive."

  
He held his breath again and exhaled deeply as he came to a decision. "Alright. Do it."

  
I closed my eyes.

  
"I need you to kneel before me, eyes front. Don't bend your head all the way, just a little." I heard him move and when I opened my eyes he was ready, on his knees, in perfect position. I pushed the hair away from his neck and followed his spine with my fingers to find the right spot. I halted when I found it and ran my finger across the joint a few times to memorise the angle.

  
I straightened my back, went around to the bucket and took a scoop-full of water. I turned to face him. He hadn't moved, still looking down, still looking resolved. I took the position on his left side.

  
"You are certain about this?" I said.

  
"Yeah." I barely heard him answer.

  
I slowly poured the water on the blade, watched in silence as it ran down the steel and onto the floor, cleansing off all evil from the sword and the act. I laid the scoop down and readied myself, standing legs apart next to him.

  
His breath was shallow, maybe hesitant.

  
"I'm sorry," I said mostly to myself and I don't think he heard me anyway. I raised the sword, wrapped my fingers firmly around the hilt and I cut down in one fluent stroke, exhaling to the motion, aiming for that certain spot on his neck.

  
"No," he whispered in desperation just as the blade was about to cut into him and I didn't have the time to break the move. But Shiokaze has a mind of its own.

  
The sword froze in mid stroke cutting only through his skin, and I was paralysed as I saw the blood running down his neck. He didn't move either, not for a moment, but then he fell forward breaking the fall at the last minute with his hands. He stayed there on all fours, shaking.

  
I took more water from the bucket, washed the blood from Shiokaze and laid it on the floor. I turned to the door. I had to get out.

  
* * *

  
He heard her close the door and walk briskly across the porch to sit down on the steps. Her smell lingered in the room along with the scent of his own hot blood that ran down his spine and around his neck, unseen under the shirt. He slowly lowered himself to the floor to lie flat there, hands besides the shoulders, right cheek against the smooth boards. He felt how the blood on his back changed direction and began to trickle over his sides. He did wonder, briefly, why he was still bleeding.  
  
The sword lay close to him and he watched its gleaming blade in the darkness. He thought how beautiful the weapon was, following the damask waves in the steel. He reached to touch it gently with his fingertips and it felt so smooth, so soothing. He knew that he shouldn't be touching the steel with his bare fingers. Knew that the oils from his hand could ruin the steel, but he didn't care.

  
He remained there, fingers resting on the cool steel.


	2. The Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He glanced at her body, which still lay on the yard where he had killed her. He took a sip from the glass, then drained it and poured yet another measure. He hadn't planned for this, but there it was. His body had made the decision for him, once again. He just had to go on from that result.

* * *

  
I was lost deep in my thoughts when I heard him close the front door behind him. I turned to watch as he walked with a slight sway in his gait, as if drunk, across the porch. He sat carefully down on the steps and leaned his shoulder to the post.

  
He looked drawn. Blood was seeping through the back of his shirt, and I couldn't see how he had managed to get up from the floor, let alone walk out here. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wood.

  
I said nothing, just watched him in the sun.

  
He lifted his hand to gently touch the wound on his neck. He brought the hand back and opened his eyes to see the blood on his fingers. "I'm still bleedin’," he said distantly. "I thought I shouldn't." He sniffed the fingers and then wiped them clean on his jeans.

  
"Might be that you don't have the energy to heal it," I said turning to him. "Pull your shirt off and let me have a look. I don't think you can afford to loose more blood than you already have." He didn't reply, but started to unbutton his shirt and slowly pulled his arms from the sleeves when he was done. Red streaks ran down his torso.

I moved to sit next to him and turned his back towards me. I placed my fingers on his neck and shoulders and delved in. It wasn't hard to change the flow to a new balance and I felt how the blood began to clot.

  
"It's not bleeding anymore," I said wiping my fingers with his shirt, "but it's not healed either, so take it easy. You need to eat before that can happen. You need to eat a lot.” I scrubbed the blood from his back with the shirt to the best I could. "Here," I said, "wipe your chest. I'll go and get you something to eat." He took the cloth and began to rub the blood off absentmindedly. I squeezed his shoulder as I got up and went in.

  
* * *

  
He woke up gasping for breath, escaping from drowning. _No._ Not water, not here. Just a dream. His heart pounded against the ribcage and the muscles in his stomach had curled up tightly. He rubbed his chest vigorously with the heel of his hand and he lay back down to the pillow. Not a time to panic. Not now, not here. Just some half-forgotten dream. Nothing more.  
  
Had there been a time to panic?

  
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the smells of the house to calm himself down.

  
The stench of his own spilled blood was nauseating. He wished that he had washed himself, but he had been so tired after the meal, that he hadn't thought about it then. At least the cut wasn't bleeding anymore, but it wasn't completely gone either: he could feel a scar under his fingers. Funny thing though. He had thought that he wouldn't scar.

  
He smelled her in the room and turned to locate her sleeping in a NATO issue camp bed. She had staunched the bleeding, he remembered. It had felt odd, her fingers on his neck. And the strange feeling under his skin. A flow of a kind, a current. Not electricity, but something else. He turned to his side.

  
He would have to decide what to do with her at some point. It would be so easy to kill her right now, to run her through in her sleep. She wouldn't hear him coming, wouldn't know what, who, hit her, wouldn't feel a thing. It would be so simple. He turned back to stare at the ceiling.

  
But there was the sword to consider. And the one thing she could do for him. Did he really want to die?

  
Did he? Really?

  
He discarded the thought quickly and run his fingers through his hair. _Maybe I should just get up and go and be done with it._ He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply and held his breath. It had started to snow outside. He could smell it. He let the air go and turned his back to the room. Well, he wouldn't have to make that decision right now, not yet anyhow. So he let the matter rest. For now.

  
He listened to her heart beat, but lost his interest after a while. The snow was beginning to build up and its scent was getting more and more pronounced. He liked that, the smell of snow.

  
* * *

  
I sat on the porch, in a chair, drinking my morning brew and taking my time enjoying the sight and sound of water dripping from the eaves. The ground, the roofs and the paddock fence were all cloaked in heavy, wet spring snow, but the sun was already working its way through it. I took a sip from my mug and leaned back closing my eyes to bask in the light myself. I smiled at the thought of winter and how the winter always makes you forget what the sun actually feels like on you.  
And it is the memory of summer, which sometimes makes these northern winters seems so cheerless and long.

  
I carefully opened my eyes and blinked for a few times before shading my eyes with my hand. The high slopes were still covered in bright white snow, but I knew it was melting fast: the brooks and rivers run high with melt waters. I felt like drifting for a moment as I gazed at the mountains and their dusty blue line appeared to be a little closer than before.

  
I do so love the high country. Almost as much as I love the woods.

  
The tea in my mug had turned cold and bitter. I leaned over and poured the remains of the liquid to the ground, drawing brown circles to the snow.

  
* * *

  
He woke up. She was gone, he could smell it. He lay on his side listening, but heard nothing of any consequence and sat up swinging his legs over the side.

  
Still nothing. No sign of her, except a forgotten tin mug on the table.

  
He felt better, not fine, but better. Stronger and more alert than in ages. His muscles were tense and he stretched his back and shoulders carefully. The muscles resisted and it annoyed him.

  
Where was she? She must have been gone for hours, since he smelled only her residency, but not her presence. He didn't think that she had escaped from him. Not as such. There were no signs of haste or panic. No things lying around. Except the mug. He got up and walked to the table. He sniffed the mug. She had drank tea this morning. You wouldn't drink tea if you were to make a run for it, now would you? So what was her game?

  
He was hungry. He went to the kitchen and rummaged through the cabinets until he found something agreeable to eat. He took the cold meat, the bread and the butter into the living room, sat down at the table and began to eat. The meat was good, some kind of game, but he couldn't guess what. He had eaten it before, years ago, but he couldn't remember what it was. It merely tasted familiar. Deer? Or moose? He buttered another slice of bread and cut a good hunk from the meat for topping.

  
He ate most of the meat and pushed the plate away when he was done. She had been right, he needed to eat and a lot, but he was already feeling his body building up the muscle he had lost. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. Maybe a week or so? He didn’t really care; he was eating now. He looked around the room. He still had the keys to the gun locker in his pocket, he had checked that. He turned around in the chair. A bookcase covered a part of the back wall and an armchair and a trunk lay next to it. He went and pushed the trunk aside. There was a knot hole in one of the floorboards. He frowned, but pried the board up and revealed a hollow under the floor.

  
The darkness made him hesitate, thought he didn't understand why. He swore, put his hand in and felt his way around the cavity. It was larger than he had expected and he went around twice before he was convinced. The sword was gone. She had moved it. He put the board back and pushed the trunk on it.

  
He followed the distinct smell of gun oil and gunpowder through the kitchen and found the gun locker beside the back door, under the stairs. Inside it were a pair of shotguns and two rifles, but no ammunition. _Not bad._ He smiled. She wasn't stupid. He didn't look for the bullets; he had no need for them. He closed the locker and went upstairs.

  
It was an average attic. One open space under a slanting ceiling with an assortment of junk in it. He looked around, opening an odd box here and there, found nothing and went back to kitchen.

  
* * *

  
The clear, cool water ran over his hands, over the joints, knuckles, fingertips and the nails. He turned his hands over under the tap and watched as the water pooled in his palms and ran over the sides and through his fingers. He lifted his hands a bit and closed his eyes as the water ran over his wrists, down the arms, circling his elbows before pouring into the sink.

  
He took a step backwards, bent down and adjusted his head under the high, long-necked tap and watered his hair thoroughly, taking pleasure in the sensation. He leaned further and the water ran on his neck, over his throat and along his jaw to trickle off from the ends of his long sideburns.

  
He pulled himself up abruptly and tilted his head. He turned the water off and listened, eyes narrow. He heard a horse walking, stopping and then someone dismounting as the horse snorted contently. He walked softly across the living room and saw her through the window, at the end of the yard.

  
So, she was back. He wandered what that meant. He couldn't see or hear anyone else, but that didn't mean that there wasn't someone coming along later on. He opened the door and stepped out.

  
He watched her unbuckle the girths and unsaddle the white-faced sorrel horse. The horse looked at him, turned its ears at him and snickered softly with a low voice. She turned, saw him and smiled.

  
"Hi there!" She turned back to the horse. "Did you sleep well?" He walked closer. The horse sniffed him, pushed its muzzle against his collarbone, snorted again and turned its head away, but kept an eye at him. She stroked its shoulders and chest. "Ach, give it a rest, will you." She took off the bridle and opened the paddock gate. The horse gave him a sidelong glance, walked through the gate and started to graze seemingly oblivious to their presence. He turned his attention back to her.

  
"Where have you been?"

  
She raised an eyebrow at the tone of his voice, but then smiled at him.

  
"Working." She took off her gloves and tucked them under the belt of her long chaps. "I needed to check out few fords and riverside tracks after the spate four nights ago. Wasn't too bad though, but it took some time to see it all.

  
"So, did you sleep well?" She looked into his eyes, but he wasn't convinced. He took a step closer.

  
"Don't give me that crap. Who did you meet?"

  
She frowned appearing confused.

  
"No-one. There aren't that many people around this early on the spring," she said and gave him that reassuring smile. "I'm starved." She turned her back to him as she headed towards the house. He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around forcefully. She nearly fell, but he held her up by her jacket. She looked surprised.

  
"I ain't done with you yet," he growled, "I know you went to tell someone about me." He pulled her closer. "So tell me. Who was it?" She frowned again in puzzlement. He didn't like that. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She ought to be afraid of him. Scared. But he didn't smell fear on her.

  
"Listen. I met no-one," she said ignoring his hold, "Why would I -" He cut her off shoving her away from him. She stumbled, but did not fall. She turned slowly around to face him. He was frustrated, he still couldn't smell any fear on her. He wanted her to be afraid of him. She was supposed to be afraid of him.

  
She held her hands up, palms open toward him. "Look. I told no-one. I met no-one. I wouldn't -" He howled in rage and charged her, pushed her over and pinned her to the ground.

  
"Bullshit," he breathed through his teeth. Something flashed in her eyes. He grinned and leaned over to smell her neck. He growled. Still no fear. He pushed his right hand against her breastplate. Hard. "Don't fuck with me, darlin'. Tell me, who did you meet?"

  
She met his gaze. "I met no-one." He swung his hand to slap her across her face. She moved and was suddenly free, pushing away from him, pushing him off balance. He slashed at her, going for her side and legs, but she stepped aside ducking behind him. He growled, sneered at her, spun around kicking, aiming for her shoulder. She ducked the kick, stepping in, making the follow-up difficult. He took the opportunity and forced her to the ground with his sheer weight. He sat on her stomach, legs astride and pinned her arms to her sides with his thighs. He leaned down, hands on her shoulders.

  
"Don't do that again." She said nothing. "Just tell me, who did you meet?"

  
She smiled softly with clear eyes. "I didn't meet anyone."

  
It made him furious, shaking. "Don't lie to me," he whispered. He was loosing it, he knew the signs. "Don't make me do things. Just tell me. Who did you meet?" His breath was getting heavier. "Just tell me. You will tell me anyway, after I'm done with you. So, just tell me. Now." He was loosing it. Why wouldn't she be afraid of him?

  
"It's the truth. I met no-one." The shaking was gone, replaced with calm rage.

  
He slowly wrapped his left hand around her throat, just below the jaw, and stroked her cheek with his thumb.

  
"Remember the blood? Remember what I told you about the blood?" He felt her breathing change. He smiled. "You remember it, don't you? So tell me. Who did you meet?"

  
"No-one. I met -" He hit her with his right hand, hard, holding her still by the jaw, but she shifted and pushed him off.

  
He growled, cursing, and followed her. She didn't try to escape but faced him, ready to take him on.

  
He tried to knock her down, sweep her legs under her, but she avoided his blows and kicks. Not by staying clear, but by staying close to him. Too close for the blows to be efficient. Too close for even to try kicking. She was always there, but always out of reach. So he waited for a mistake. Kept her moving, getting high on the combat and the rage. He loved the feeling, how his senses not only sharpened but gained more depth, how his body became fluent, like a sea crashing against a reef, unstoppable, relentless, effortless, all-powerful.

  
Then it came, an opening, and he took her down once more.

  
"Just tell me! Just tell me who you met!" He was shouting, growling, sitting on her as before. She struggled to breath and looked straight into him

.  
"No-one. I -" He let the right hand claws out and drew them into her flank. He was breathing hard, panting from the adrenaline. His chest felt twice as large as usual. He didn't smell fear on her, but he smelled her blood and he smiled, satisfied.

  
She shuddered under him, eyes open and looking at him. She inhaled laboriously and exhaled as blood run from the side of her mouth. Inhaled. He felt her body loose its natural tension under him, felt a change in her heartbeat under his groin. She exhaled, became still and then the pulse was gone too. Through all that she was looking at him.

  
He pulled his claws free; they had cut straight through her into the ground. He shook his hand to rid the claws of the most of the blood. He left them extended.  
He sat there on his knees over her for a moment. He hadn't planned for this, but there it was. His body had made the decision for him, once again. He just had to go on from that result.

  
He wiped the blood from her face with his clean hand and got up. He needed to think. There was a bottle of whisky in the cupboard he remembered. But first he needed to wash himself.

  
* * *

  
He sat on the steps, the bottle of whisky at his feet and a generous measure of it in his glass. He had washed the blood from his hands and claws in the kitchen. The bottle had been where he had remembered seeing it. He had picked it and a glass along it up and had headed for the porch. He had noticed a woollen jersey on a chair in the living room and had taken that along too.

  
It wasn't like any whisky he had tasted before. It had a green bottle with a plain label and a weird Scottish name, which he didn't even bother to read out loud. Even the e from whisky was missing. It tasted of smoke, pine tar and peat, and he detected a hint of iodine somewhere in it too. Strange stuff, but he decided that it wasn't too bad and he poured another one.

  
The worn-out shirt actually fit him. He assumed that she had left it specially for him this morning to replace his ruined one. He appreciated the gesture. The weather wasn't that warm yet. There were blood stains in his jeans but it was something he decided to set aside for now. It really wasn’t that much blood and he wanted to loosen up a bit before trying to see if there he could find a clean pair of jeans or something. If she had a shirt that fit him she just might have some sort of pants too somewhere.

  
He glanced at her body, which still lay on the yard where he had killed her. He took a sip from the glass, then drained it and poured yet another measure.

  
He was disappointed with himself. How careless can you get? He was reasonably sure, as an afterthought, that she hadn't told anyone about him. Nobody had showed up so far and he assumed that nobody would. It didn't make any tactical sense to send her so far ahead the main force; there wasn't much to be gained by that. Unless they hadn't expected him and her to fight. Maybe they had planned to wait for the night, to let her assure him that there was nothing going on and then capture him. The thought made him edgy. He picked up the bottle and moved into the shadow beside the wall. To be out of plain sight.

  
“You think too much,” he told himself aloud. No-one with any competence would bother with a plan like that. Too wide time frame. Too many variables to consider. Too complicated and therefore not worth the risk since you could reach the same goal through other means. He was being paranoid, he knew that.

  
She hadn't told anyone and that was that.

  
He finished the third one and realised that he was beginning to discover the complexity of the malt. He filled the glass and made a point of pealing off the layers of the whisky's savour. Apparently not being able to get drunk had its benefits after all.

  
* * *

  
The sun was getting low (he had almost finished the bottle) and the roof's shadow cut her half at the waist. Her right leg was bent, fallen to the side, ankle under the left knee. A crow landed some feet away from the body. It groomed the feathers under its wing, then hobbled closer and jumped to sit on her chest. He stood up and stepped down from the porch to pick up a pebble from the ground. The bird glanced at him, adjusted the quills of its left wing and cleaned its beak against her shirt.

  
“Hoy!” He threw the pebble at the crow. He didn't want to hit her and the stone came short missing the bird. The crow looked at him, blinked and ignored him. It walked closer to her face and came to a stand on her collar. He picked up another pebble and began to walk closer. The crow looked into her open eye, tilting its head to the side. He broke into a run, yelling. The bird turned its attention to him, called annoyingly and took off. He threw the pebble after it.

  
Her eyes were staring at him when he came closer. He crouched down and closed them. She was still warm.

  
He knelt down on one knee and took a hold of her right arm just above the elbow. He pulled the body up into a sitting position and placed her armpit behind his neck pulling until most of her weight was on his shoulder. She was heavier than he had expected. He put his right hand between her thighs and pushed himself up. He turned around looking for a place to hide her from sight. The smell of dried hay lead him to the barn.

  
There was a stock of hay bales at the end of the barn and he laid her on top of them. The dried hay had a sweet scent to it, but it wasn't enough to cover the smell of her blood. The rats would find her soon enough, he didn't doubt that, but at least he didn't have to watch them eat. He shut the door on his way out, sealing off the darkness where she lay.

  
He stopped to cover the blood soaked spot on the yard, kicking dark, moist gravel on top of it. The tracks would be indistinct in the night and the ground's moisture would obscure them even further by morning. He returned to the house and picked up the whisky as he went in.

  
* * *

  
He had fallen asleep in the armchair. The fire was still burning in the open fireplace, hissing quietly. He had heard something. He didn't change his position, but remained there, muscles relaxed and eyes closed. Listening, waiting.

  
Someone stepped on the porch, casually but hesitantly. Not hiding and yet careful. He followed the footsteps across the decking to the door, heard the hand on the door handle, how it was pressed down and the door opened. He prepared himself, heart beating, ready to fight.

  
Then the scent reached his nose. He opened his eyes in surprise and scrambled to his feet. The claws came out, on instinct, as he turned to the door.

  
“You!” She was there, standing, alive, leaning her hand against the door frame. “I killed you!”

  
She smiled. “Do I look dead to you? You of all people should know better.” She took a step towards him. He raised his hand at her, threatening her with his claws. His hand was shaking.

  
“Don't - Hold it right there!” She stood still, looking at him and holding on to the frame. He sniffed the air, crouched as he caught a whiff of blood in it. “Don't move a fuckin' muscle.” His heartbeat was heavy and he felt odd, distracted. She frowned.

  
“You didn't kill me.” He shook his head. “You didn't. Your claws missed my heart, not by much, but they missed.” Her voice was soft, low. She lifted the hem of her jacket and shirt. “Look, you're not an unused soldier, you've seen your share of wounds.” She gasped as she held the cloths higher to reveal three puncture wounds. “Look at the angle. See, a bit more to the left and you would have killed me.”

  
He walked slowly closer keeping his eyes locked to hers, not looking at the wounds. He came to a stand in front of her and held the claws of his left hand to her throat. He pulled her hand away from the clothes and pushed it aside. She held the hand high, at the hight of her head, palm outward.

  
“I won't move,” she said. His eyes narrowed and he pressed the claws a little closer. Still no fear, but he wasn't expecting any, not anymore. “Just look for yourself.”

  
He lifted the hem himself. She was right, the angle had been wrong. He wasn't sure whether to curse or not. And the wounds were partly healed, though red and swollen. He touched one of them with his finger. She twitched and he stepped away from her.

  
“But you died. I watched you die. Your heart stopped and you died.” His frustration came out as menace in his voice.

  
Suddenly she looked sad. “Aye, I died.” His breathing was heavy and he scowled. She ran her hand across her face. “Listen. This is complicated and I'm still weak. Wouldn't you let me sit down? Please? And I'll explain it all to you.”

  
“Or maybe I should just kill you proper.”

  
She laughed. “Aye, you could always do that instead.” She turned serious. “What makes you think that the outcome would be any different this time?”

  
“I don't make the same mistake twice.”

  
She squinted thoughtfully at him. “No, you're right. You wouldn’t." She stretched her back and grimaced. “So how about it? You can take me down any time you like, but it would be much easier for both of us if I sat down.”

  
He laughed grimly and waved her towards the sofa. She sunk into it, head bent back against the leather. He looked at her exposed throat and the beast in him licked its muzzle. She raised her head up.

  
“Aye, I did die. You’re right about that too.”

  
“So I did kill you,” he said smirking.

  
“No, you didn't. I did that myself.”

  
He took a furious step towards her, claws raised. “I told you already. Don't fuck with me, darlin’."

  
“Alright, maybe killing myself is a bit strong way to put it.” She thought about it for a while. “Ever heard of suspended animation, have you?”

  
He snorted. “Yeah, in science fiction movies.”

  
She laughed. “I know, sounds daft, but it might be the best way to describe it.” He drew the claws in, pulled a chair and sat down in front of her.  
“I died to survive,” she said after a brief silence.

  
“Come again?”

  
“I realised that you weren't about to believe me and I couldn't fight you. So I chose an alternative strategy. I died, stepped out of my body.”

  
He stood up. “Fuck you. When you die you're gone for good.” He pulled the chair closer to her. “And you don't seem dead to me.”

  
“I said I stepped out of my body.”

  
He frowned grinding his teeth.

  
“I needed you to believe that I had died so you wouldn't actually kill me. And I left my body, stepped out of it and left it in suspended animation.” She rolled her eyes. “Now it sounds daft even to me.”

  
He lifted his chin up. “But I stabbed you and it was just my bad luck that I didn't kill you.”

  
“It was?” She leaned her head forward. “Maybe. Who knows? The fact is that your claws missed my heart and we're back where we started from.”

  
“So who did you meet?”

  
She sighed sounding tired of repeating herself. “I met no-one. I didn't tell anyone about you and I wasn't about to.” She looked into his eyes. “And I'm not going to.”

  
“Yeah, right.”

  
“You would've killed me the moment you saw me at the door if you had thought that I lied to you.”

  
“You think so?”

  
She didn't reply.

  
“So you can read minds too? Along with this resurrection bullshit.” He waved his hands in vague circles between them.

  
“How are you feeling?”

  
“What?”

  
“Your side and legs. How are they?”

  
She waited for a while gazing at him and then rested her head on the back of the couch.

  
* * *

  
She was sleeping again. She had woken up a few hours ago, had heated a can of beans and had eaten them with some bread. She had stayed up for some time, had talked with him about trivial, everyday things and he had listened, but hadn't said anything. (So in essence she had ended up talking to him, not with him.) Eventually she had gone back to bed, the same one he had slept in the night before and she had fallen to sleep almost the moment she had closed her eyes. He knew, he had listened to her heartbeat.  
  
He couldn't sleep. There was a strange restlessness in his body. An uneasiness that wouldn't go away, but held on, itching, twisting in the mind. Keeping him awake though he was tired to the bone.

  
It was a familiar feeling. An unexpected combination of anticipation, worrying and eagerness. An old acquaintance whom he knew he knew, but couldn't remember meeting.

  
He got up from the armchair in front of the fire and walked to her bedside. She was fast asleep, dreaming; her eyes moved behind the closed eyelids. Her hair was cut in a short, wild style, ends uneven and thick. He wondered whether it would be heavy to wear it long.

  
(He wanted to lift the blanket. He wanted to see the wounds on her flesh. He wanted to see if they had healed and so to verify what he already suspected.)

  
He hadn't spoken to her after she had asked how he felt, not a word after that. Somehow she had caught him off guard and had claimed the ground and she held it even now, in her sleep. He didn't like that, the feeling of being the underdog, but he had yet to figure out how to win this battle. To really win, on his terms.

  
He lifted the blanket carefully and folded it gently back over her legs. She didn't stir, her heartbeat didn't change, but he waited anyway before beginning to roll her shirt up.

  
The scars where still there, red and fresh. Healed enough so they wouldn't bleed but barely more than that. He inhaled deeply, tasted the air in his nose. He remembered the smell of her blood when he had buried his claws into her. It made him snarl.

  
He touched the scars with three fingers matching one over each of the puncture marks. It was so easy to kill, to slaughter, especially for him, armed with his claws. So easy, almost effortless at times, that it made him doubt his own sanity afterwards. _It ain’t supposed to feel like that,_ he thought and laid his palm over the wounds. He let the claws partly out. The blades cut the skin between the knuckles drawing some blood and he studied the reflections on their surface.

  
_I know it ain't supposed to be like this, he thought, No sane man ought to feel the things I feel when I smell blood. _He drew the blades in and it hurt like it always did. Even more than it hurt to push them out.

  
_Maybe I ain't sane no more._

  
_Was I ever?_

  
Her skin felt warm and soft under his hand and he stroke her gently with his thumb. She changed her position, breathing slightly lighter and he quickly pulled his hand away. He waited until her breathing was slow and deep enough again and he began to roll her shirt back down.

  
There were other scars on her. Old ones, well healed and almost gone. He stared at them for a moment analysing the cuts, the punctures and the tears. He knew the movements behind those marks, recognised the weapons and their aims. And he knew he had been wrong. She wasn't like him. Not like him after all.

  
_Am I disappointed?_


	3. The News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Death is easy, you know. There are more horrible things that I could do to you than just kill you."

* * *

  
Lou had this gold-coloured spring bell which chimed with a sweet ching every time the front door was opened. Come to think of it, I'm sure he still has it. Lou is not a person to change things for mere change's sake. It took a year of persuasion and eventually a threat from the insurance company to make him buy a new cash register. And even then the new machine was hidden behind the counter while the revered NCR with a brass box was left on top.

  
Adds to the ambiance of the place he claimed.

  
The White River Trading Company was founded on ambiance. There is no White River to be found in those parts of the province, but that was not an excuse when Lou bought the business and replaced the old "supplies" sign with a new one.

  
Folks did ask about the White River.

  
"It's good for the business," Lou had answered sounding proud of his enterprise. "Makes the tourists think about snow and winter," and it admittedly did. More people began to stop by on their holiday travels and Lou's little general shop expanded into a proper store with locally produced food and crafts. The obligatory maple leaf and beaver kitsch got its own section.

  
Despite all the cunning plans to draw more tourists in, the store kept its friendly, laid-back country atmosphere, though I suspect that too was a part of the well built plan for increased ambiance. Nevertheless, it still was a general store with proper groceries and such. A combined grocer's, baker's, butcher's, ironmonger's, petrol station, clothier with mixed plants and things during the late spring and summer.

  
And it was the only store in the village, so there you go.

  
Lou noted me with a smiling nod when I came in. He was serving an out of town couple, introducing them to a selection of Granny Mary's homemade jams and pickles. I picked up two baskets and went for the groceries. Lou caught up with me when I was about to add the sixth bottle of beer into my basket.

  
"I thought you didn't drink beer, Grace."

  
"A correction, if you may," I said turning to meet him, "I don't drink North American beer."

  
"Ah, I forgot," Lou said and tapped his nose with his forefinger. “Only imported. So a guest then?"

  
"Aye. A wee army of snails is camping in my garden." I put the last bottle into my basket. "The buggers ate my lettuces and pestered my strawberries all summer last year but this time, " I winked my eye, "this time I'm prepared."

  
"I suppose it's a sweet way to go."

  
"They sure seem to appreciate it." We both laughed and Lou whipped off to the counter where a local customer waited with her shopping. I continued toward the meats.

  
* * *

  
I laid my two baskets on the counter. Lou was watching the news from a wee telly he had on a high shelve in the corner. Tom Hughes was leaning against the counter, eyes glued to the screen. I placed my palms on the edge on the counter, leaned on my hands, and lifted my right heel to rest my leg. A red-haired reporter was talking in front of a dull grey concrete complex, eyes and voice serious.

  
"... and as the final appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court the research centre will now be closed down later this week. The centre has been inactive since last summer when the provincial government issued an investigation after serious allegations concerning unnecessary testing and generally brutal treatment of the centre's laboratory animals came into public. At first the management..."

  
"It's about goddamn time." Tom pushed his hat back with his finger. He looked at me and nodded towards the reporter. "But I guess it's better late than never, right Grace?"

  
I nodded. "Is that that Alkali Lake institute they're talking about?"

  
"Yeah," said Tom and looked back at the telly. They where showing the old, grained images about the animals and some of the tests which they had been showing regularly for the last year. Lou shook his head.

  
"It's unbelievable, unbelievable. I'm not against testing medicines and such on animals, but that stuff is just sick."

  
We watched the black and white images in silence. The reporter returned into the view.

  
"Last week the government's spokesman announced that evidence of even more cruel, some say sadistic, experiments have been found. No details of these experiments have been released, but our sources within the government confirm the findings. Earlier today the police announced that they are investigating the rumours of experimentation on humans, but that so far..."

  
"Goddamn it!" Tom slammed his hand against the counter top. "If those goddamn bastards have -. Hell!"

  
"It's just rumours," I said. "You know how it is with people."

  
Lou leaned his elbow against the counter. "Let's hope you're right."

  
"At least they're closing it down," Tom said and straightened his back. "Even if it were just animals they were torturing it's still bad enough. But I'll be damned if we see those scientists in court. I bet they'll just hush this up."

  
"I don't see how they can," I said. "It's been all over the news for months now. Everybody knows."

  
"But the officials were embarrassed by it. It was a government project, so they paid for it and all and they knew about it all the time, mark my words. I'll bet my ass on it." Tom waved his index finger at us. "Just wait and see."

  
"I just can't wrap my head around it," said Lou and scratched his brow. "What the hell did they think they were doing? Just look at that," he pointed at the telly where a white coated lab technician tied an ape to a table and injected it with something. The animal trashed against the restraints, but the sedative in its veins began to have an effect on it and its body slowly relaxed. The technician shaved its arm, picked up a scalpel and cut its arm open. The ape was still conscious: its eyes were open. The voice on the reporter was explaining something but none of us heard what he was saying.

  
"Now there's a pretty picture for the daytime TV," Tom said looking pale under his tan.

  
I didn't feel like saying anything but I said it anyway: "That makes no sense to me."

  
"What?"

  
"The poor bugger's still awake and he's just cutting it. See, he's not doing anything specific. He's just opening the arm up, layer by layer."

  
“Well, thank you very much for pointing that out, Grace." The image changed and Lou took a good swallow from an old, cold coffee. He grimaced and spit it back into the mug.

  
Tom seemed to be cultivating an interest in the matter. "Maybe there's a reason why the monkey is awake."

  
"You got a point there, Tom," I said. "They might be brutal, but they ain't stupid. They wouldn't waste money like this, not on this scale. They're on to something."

  
"We don't have all the relevant information here," Lou pointed out. "They're not showing us everything."

  
"No, they're not, but they're showing us something."

  
"Aye, and there's something in it."

  
The news moved on to the next subject. Lou began to sort out my shopping. Tom was lost in his thoughts and I kept on watching the telly. The newsman was going through the provincial topics.

  
A familiar face showed up in the background.

  
"The Alberta Royal Mounted Police has issued a Canada-wide warrant for the arrest of the man seen here in the background. He is wanted by the police for the violent rape of a 20 year old student and the murders of two police officers nearly two moths ago near Fox Creek."

  
"Aw, shite!"

  
"What?"

  
"Nothing. I just remembered something I should’ve taken care of."

  
They zoomed into the picture of a man with black, close-shaved crew cut hair and a dark jaw-line. It was him, I knew the look in his eyes.

  
"The police has not named the culprit as there is some mixed information on his identity and would ask for the public's assistance in identifying and apprehending the suspect. The police remind the public that the wanted person is extremely dangerous and that under no circumstances should he be approached, though I'm certain that those of us who remember the crimes in question here don't need to be reminded of his violence. The police contact numbers can be seen at the bottom of the screen."

  
* * *

  
I stopped at the library on my way back home. It took me a while to find the relevant articles from old newspapers, but I did and I took photocopies of them.

  
I parked my pick-up on a wee side-road several miles from home and read the articles thoroughly. The suspect had picked up the sweet-looking blond student from a bar in Fox Creek, had driven some ten miles away from town and had raped her under a willow tree by the river.

  
But not before beating the shit out of her. Not before cutting her face and thighs. And according to a tabloid he had used an unspecified tool on her before actually raping her.

  
She had barely survived and had been in coma for a week. As far as could tell from the old articles she might still be hospitalised.

  
Had it really been him? They didn't give any description of the assailant in the papers. I moved on to the murders.

  
The two police men had been investigating the rape when they had been killed. A trucker had found them and their car on a lay-by. The older of the two had been lying on the ground next to the car with his chest ripped open. The younger one had been found in the woods near by stabbed, six times.

  
That might well have been him. Six times. Two times three. I brushed my hand against my side just below the ribcage. Those wounds didn't hurt anymore.

  
I collected the papers into a pile on my lap and looked out through the side window. It started to rain. The raindrops ran down the glass and I watched as the wee rivers joined together, parted company and joined again drawing an ever changing web against the dusk.

  
Despite all the news I wasn't convinced. I laughed silently. He was a killer. I of all people had no reason to doubt that – even if he hadn't stabbed me.

  
I turned the key in the ignition to get the wipers going.

  
I wasn't entirely sure what to do. All I had was a dream and a gut feeling. And an obligation: he had asked me to kill him.

  
I twisted the key further and the hum of the engine joined the drumming of the rain. Maybe I should have chosen the other sword. Then he would have been dead.  
I needed to play this one by the ear. I switched the headlights on, turned the car around and returned to the road back home.

  
* * *

  
He was standing at the door, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, when I drove through the gate. I waved my hand and he nodded his head slightly to return the greeting, but then suddenly flinched pulling his hands abruptly free from his pockets and disappeared into the house. I parked the pick-up, collected the groceries from the back of the car and went in after him.

  
"Got you something," I said as I laid the cardboard box on the dining table. "Here, catch." I cast the bundle of clothes to him. "Hope they fit." I took the box to the kitchen.

  
He was standing by the table when I came back. He was bare-chested (muscular but clearly on the thin side for his build), one hand holding the T-shirt and the other on the table where he had spread the copies of the articles, reading. I went over, put the tray down on the table across from him, sat down and began to eat my portion of the soup. He kept reading for a while, shuffling through the papers, halting occasionally to read something more thoroughly. He pushed the papers into a makeshift pile, put the T-shirt on and sat down. He shredded some of the bread into wee pieces with his fingers and mixed them into his soup.

  
The soup tasted better than I had expected. A night in the cellar had worked wonders and I got myself a second bowl-full. He followed suit and did his thing with the bread again.

  
"Eat the rest if you want to," I said when I was done.

  
"What?"

  
"The soup. You can have what's left of it." I got up and collected my bowl and cutlery. "There isn't that much left."

  
He ate a spoon full and leaned back. "Yeah, sure. I guess I could."

  
I left the bowl in the sink, took my coat and went out to check on the horses.

  
* * *

  
He was sitting by the fire when she came back in. She hung her coat and went to the kitchen. He heard her open a cabinet twice, then the fridge and a familiar sound of a bottle being opened. She came back carrying a shot of whisky in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other.

  
"You strike me as a beer drinking man," she said. He accepted the bottle and she put her glass down on the mantel. She moved the second armchair closer to the fireplace, took the glass and sat down next to him.

  
He drank from the bottle, let the beer linger in his mouth before swallowing it and grunted contently. She smiled at him.

  
"Good, eh?"

  
He mumbled an affirmative. She took a sip from her glass.

  
"Did you know that you're wanted for that rape and two murders?" she said without a warning. The bottle froze halfway to his lips. He gave a quick sideways glance at her, but she was looking at the fire sitting comfortably in her chair, legs stretched towards the flames. He finished the bottle before saying anything.

  
"I wondered about those newspaper scraps you left there," he said laying the empty bottle on the floor besides the armchair.

  
"I got them from the library," she said and drank what was left of her whisky. "They showed your face in the telly while I was at Lou's and I wanted to refresh my memory."

  
He leaned his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He sat still for a moment, gathering his thoughts and trying to come to terms with the situation. He sighed resigning himself to his fate.

  
"So now you know me for what I am," he said with an edge of scorn in his voice. He ran his fingers through his hair.

  
"I know very little about you," she said softly. He got up and walked to the fireplace.

  
"You know nothin'," he said, "nothin' at all."

  
She didn't reply; he clenched his hands.

  
"How long do I have?"

  
"How long to what?"

  
"Before they're here."

  
"Who?" She stood up and came closer but stopped just beyond his reach.

  
“How the fuck would I know?" He turned to face her. "But it won't be the mounties, that's for sure."

  
"No-one knows that you are here."

  
"Somebody knows, darlin', somebody always knows."

  
"Alright, I do, but I haven't told anyone."

  
He took a step closer looming over her. “Don’t fuck with me. They know. They always know."

  
"Don't be paranoid."

  
He forced her back as he stepped closer, overshadowing her and underlining his words with his finger at her face. "I'm not bein' paranoid. You know nothin' so assume nothin'."

  
"Who would be after you if it's not the mounties?"

  
"You wanna know who?" He shoved her backwards across the room. She hit the couch and stumbled. He followed her and closed the distance between them with a few angry steps. "You really want to know?"

  
She stood up. "Who?"

  
He let the claws in his hands out.

  
"They do," he said raising his hands at her. He scowled, furious. "The bastards who gave me these, who made me into what I am now." His hands trembled.

  
She looked at the claws. "I see."

  
"No, you don't!" he yelled cutting the air as he slashed his arms open. "You don't know shit about me!"

  
"I didn't -." She lifted her hands defensibly and stepped away from him. He followed.

  
"You know what," he said, his voice low, "Maybe I am a fuckin' rapist." He grabbed her by her shoulders and threw her down straddling her under him. "Maybe I am. Who knows? I sure as hell don't!"

  
"I don't think -."

  
"Shut up!" He took ahold of her hair and pulled her head back revealing her throat. "You keep your mouth shut or I will rip your tongue out!" She felt warm under him and the mixed scent of whisky and horses and moist earth filled his lungs. There was a strange familiarity to it.

  
She said nothing, but glared at him.

  
"You should me afraid of me," he growled. He moved backwards to sit on her hips, never letting go of her hair. He pulled her shirts free from her trousers and slid his right hand claws under the shirts cutting them in half. "You should have called the mounties. You should have stayed in town." He retracted his claws to unbuckle his belt and began to unbutton his jeans. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist.

  
"Listen to me. You're -."

  
He jerked his hand free and let claws out with a sharp snikt.

  
"I told you to shut up!" He pulled his hand back to threaten her with her claws. "So shut the fuck up!" He yanked her head by the hair. "You know nothin', nothin' at all. So shut the fuck up!"

  
The look in her eyes turned cold. "If you want to kill me then kill me. Run me through and be done with it," she said, voice filled with cold anger.

  
He let go of her hair and sat up straight. He lifted his left hand up to let her see his claws. He snarled at her as he remembered the scent of her blood and how it had felt when his claws had cut into her. And he remembered the heart beat under his groin.

  
"This time I won't miss," he promised.

  
"I should hope so."

  
His eyes narrowed. He launched himself at her, screamed at the top of his lungs with anger, frustration and bloodlust. He rammed his hands against the floor, one at each side of her head, pushing the claws all the way down until his knuckles hit the floorboards. He screamed, howled at her face until as his whole body shuddered as he forced the air from his lungs, pressing his hands against the wood.

  
He ran out of air and he panted while crouching over her, his eyes locked with hers.

  
Suddenly he jerked his head back breaking the eye contact, leaped up and bolted out forcing the door open with his shoulder.

  
She closed her eyes and lay on the floor for a long while. Eventually she got up slowly, brushed imaginary dust off her clothes and studied her slit shirts with a quiet sigh. She turned towards the front door, considered something looking thoughtfully after him before going out herself.

  
* * *

  
He was standing in the thin moonlight, supporting himself against the porch rail with both of his hands; the claws were gone. She went to stand at his side, looking at the moon and the distant mountains pale and eerie in their snowy glow.

  
"You are not afraid of me," he said after a lengthy silence. "Why?"

  
"How can you tell?"

  
"I don't smell fear on you."

  
She smiled. "Fair enough."

  
He lifted his eyes from the ground to stare in the distance. "So how come?"

  
"To fear you I should first fear death."

  
"Death is easy, you know. There are more horrible things that I could do to you than just kill you."

  
"Aye, there are. There's no denying that, but the thing is," she said, "that when faced with pain and torture people want to survive, to not to die." She was lost in a distant memory for a moment. "The wish for death comes later. Much later."

  
"And then you're not afraid anymore."

  
"No, you're not."

  
The mutual silence lasted until she shivered from the cold. He glanced at her shyly, bent his head and turned to her. He touched hesitantly her shirts where his claws had cut them open.

  
"I'm - I didn't mean to -."

  
She looked at his hand.

  
"Don't worry about it," she said. He could see the scarred skin of her abdomen through the slit. He turned away to look at the mountains again.  
"Can I ask you something," she said facing him.

  
He shrugged his shoulders.

  
"What did you mean when you said that you didn't know whether you raped her or not?"

  
He moved uncomfortably and crossed his arms. "I meant what I said. I don't know."

  
She waited patiently. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. She turned back to the mountains taking pressure off of him, and he buried his face in his hands and leaned his elbows on the rail.

  
"I honestly don't know." He let his head sink between his shoulders. "I don't remember rapin' her. I don't remember not rapin' her. I think I remember killin' those cops but I'm not sure." He sunk to his knees, hands still on the rail. "If they say I did it, then I must have, right? 'Cause I don't remember. I don't remember anythin'."

  
She squatted down.

  
"What do you remember?" she said with a voice barely more that a whisper.

  
He sighed and sat down drawing his hands down to his lap.

  
"Not much," he said with resignation. "I remember wakin' up in a forest, naked, soaked in blood, and with these," he let the claws out, "stickin' out from my hands. I don't remember how I got them. I don't remember how I got there. I don't remember who I am or who I was before these." He shook his clawed hands angrily as though disgusted by their presence.

  
"I remember wakin’ up, disoriented and cold and hungry. My body ached and I was frightened, scared, but furiously mad at the same time too. I wanted to get rid of these, but they didn't come off, not even when I tried to cut them from my hands." He drew the blades in. "That's when I found out that I heal fast. Almost as fast as I cut myself.

  
"It took me awhile to figure out how to draw them in and it hurts." He rubbed his knuckles. "It hurts so much. Even more than it hurts to release them." He laughed morbidly. "Those fuckin' sons of bitches knew their trade."

  
He was quiet for a while; she waited in the darkness.

  
"I washed myself with snow. I knew I had escaped from somewhere, that they were, are, after me, but I had no idea who they were." He sneered slightly. "But I have their scent now." He closed his eyes.

  
"I hunted down an elk. I killed it, skinned it, ate its meat raw and wrapped its bloody skin around me for warmth. It took me days to find a house, to steal some clothes that actually fit, and a car and some money." He sighed and ran his hand across his face.

  
"They almost caught me twice before I got their scent and after that I've been able to smell them in time." He opened his eyes and stared into the night.

  
"The first eight months are blurry, a real mess. I don't remember much about them, just some moments, feelings and images. A few days at the best. Nothin' solid." He sighed again.

  
"But the thing is that I still have these - blackouts that I don't remember. Sometimes nothin' at all, sometimes I remember some of it," he said hoarsely. "So I don't know if I raped her. You have seen what I am, how I sometimes get. You know me for what I am." He turned his head down. "So I guess I must have done it. Look what I almost did to you and I wasn't even completely gone then. So if they say that I did it, then I must have." He closed his right hand and the claws slid out.

  
"I tried to kill myself, I did, but it didn’t work. I can't die even if I deserve to. I tried but I can't." He drove the blades through his left wrist. He left them there, watching the dark blood before pulling them out and back in. The wounds healed and he shuddered.

  
She watched him in silence.

  
* * *

  
I touched him gently on his shoulder, but he shied under my hand.

  
"I don't think you raped her."

  
He snapped his head up to look at me in disbelief.

  
"That rape was deliberate, planned in advance, sadistic. Think about it." He frowned at the thought. "Who ever did it, cut her up and used a tool before actually doing it himself."

  
He turned fully towards me.

  
"You, instead, seem to act violently when triggered by someone or something. You would have done it in the heat of the moment, but not in cold blood."

  
"But you think I could have done somethin' like it?" he said quietly, digust colouring his voice.

  
I thought about what to say to him. ”No," I said and lifted my hand to hold his shoulder. He didn't try to avoid the contact this time. "I don't think that it's in you."

  
He snatched my hand by the wrist before I had the chance to draw it back. He pulled me to him surprising me with a desperate hug, embracing me with his hands, face buried in my hair; shivering, swinging us slightly as he clung to me.

  
I hugged him back, smoothing his hair with my hand. I delved briefly in to check upon the wound, but it was completely healed; he had recovered his lost strength. The taste of steel filled my mouth and I moved away from it, keeping my distance.

  
He pulled away, faltered, and left his hands on my knees. He turned his head towards the open door and the light from the living room fell on his face. He had the auburn eyes of the old hound and the same look in them. His eyes moved across the floor and he twitched, yanked his hands back to himself and glanced at me shyly as he turned his head towards the darkness.

  
"What's that?" I said and touched a chain around his neck. He pulled a lonesome dog tag from under his T-shirt.

  
"I don't know. I had it when I woke up."

  
He let me touch it and I turned it so I could read it in the light.

  
"Wolverine. Is that your name?"

  
He smiled half smirking. "No, darlin', it ain't." He slipped the metal plate back under his shirt. "Now that would be plain stupid. I’m Logan."

  
"You're sure? 'Cause with that memory of yours -," I said pretending a mocking concern.

  
"I don't remember much, but give me some credit here," he claimed lifting an eyebrow.

  
“So, is it the first or the last name?"

  
"I don't care. Do you?"

  
"Fair enough. It's good to meet you, Logan." I got up and offered my hand to him. "I'm Grace."

  
He took my hand and pulled himself up.

  
"Good to meet you too, Grainne."


	4. The Call

* * *

  
  
"Yeah?"

  
"Nick, it's me."

  
"Oh hi, Grace. How you doin'?"

  
"He called me Grainne."

  
"Who did?"

  
"He did. He called me Grainne."

  
"You sure?"

  
"Hell yeah."

  
"Strange. How could he know? Nobody calls you that these days. Nobody except me and few others from the original crew and he for sure ain’t one of them. I don’t know, maybe he just made a mistake. A Freudian slip or what ever."

  
"Nick, it's quite a long leap from Grace to Grainne. And that would not count as a Freudian slip.”

  
"Yeah, true. He's not one of us, we know that for sure."

  
“Aye, he's a mutant, at least he ought to be one but –I don’t know.”

  
"And you're sure you haven't met him before?"

  
"Positive. Though -."

  
"But what?"

  
"I don't know. Something I can't point my finger at."

  
"Figure it out. You know what's at stake here."

  
"I will. Don't worry about it."

  
"Do I ever?"

  
"Ha-ha."

  
"Keep the sword at hand, will you. Just in case. I'll look into it, but we might have to get rid of him, you never know."

  
"Nick, I can't do that."

  
"Aw, come on, Grace. Don't go and grow a conscience now."

  
"Hey, it's me you're talking about. It's not that."

  
"What then?"

  
"He asked me to kill him."

  
“Shit, Grace, oh for fuck’s - Did you try to?"

  
"Aye, I did. But he changed his mind at the last possible moment."

  
"So he told you not to, right?"

  
"No. It's complicated, but he didn't. Just had a change of heart at the right moment."

  
"Or at the wrong moment."

  
"We'll see."

  
"So you're still bound by the Code?"

  
"Afraid so."

  
"Oh well. Like I said, I'll look into it, and I can take care of him if it comes to that. Stay sharp, Grace, you hear me."

  
"Hey, it's -."

  
"-you. I know, that's why I said it."

  
"Alright, I will."

  
"Call me."

  
"I will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stories never have a beginning. Frank Herbert (writer of the Dune stories) once wrote: "There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story." Same goes with beginnings: all characters come from somewhere, they have history that precedes the place where the story starts. They join the storyline at their own pace; the story connects their life histories as they and it unravel. 
> 
> Herbert also wrote: "Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the universe is always one step beyond logic." I like his idea but I don't agree with it. Universes as stories have a logic. The trouble is, it seldom is the logic we assume, want or expect it to be. To write or read a story is to unravel a logic of that story. Writing "All Partial Evil" has surprised me often; it is often telling itself. Writing is my way of getting to know it. Bear with me. It will all become clear.


	5. The Steel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have a name especially for that cut, he thought and tried to remember it, but the name slunk back into the haziness of his mind. Makes no difference to him, I suppose. He's still dead.

* * *

  
_They watched the rising of a different sun over a different valley. He had wrapped his dark grey-green cape around his shoulders, and she sat besides him back against the cold rock face._

  
_“There exists a quiet, sometimes almost serene moment, that precedes every battle,” he said and pushed himself closer to the stone with his legs. “A moment marking a change in fate, in life, in death. A silent moment, a dream state, in which everything is clear, solid, resolute as you accept your fate, recognise the possibility of your death, the death of others by your hand and by the hands of others.”_

  
_She smiled affectionately at his manner of speaking. He smiled too, though for a different reason and a different time._

  
_“At first it is a mere blink, a threshold you cross so swiftly that you only notice it when you have already moved past it. But every battle you survive adds to that moment, elongating it until it lasts even for hours, long sweet hours, until you take your weapon into your hand, and the drummer changes his pace, and yours.”_

  
_She turned back towards the valley. He bent his right leg under him and stood up._

  
_“Time to go.”_

  
* * *

  
Logan woke up abruptly just before the dawn. He found himself sitting in the camp-bed, neck and chest wet with sweat, gasping. He though that he had screamed but he couldn't remember for sure, though his throat was dry and oddly sore. He wiped his forehead with the hem of his T-shirt and ran both of his hands through his hair to sweep it back, away from his eyes.  
  
He closed his eyes. There had been a dream there somewhere in his mind. A memory, an experience relived, but now forgotten, gone again. He remembered liquid thicker than water and the feeling of drowning; burning in his lungs and on his bones. He felt the panic rise in his chest and he bit his teeth together to fight it back.

  
“Feeling better?”

  
The sudden voice startled him, but it was only Grace, grouching next to the bed in the predawn dusk. He drew his partly unsheathed claws back in.

  
“I'm fine,” he grunted. “Just some fuckin' nightmare.” He pushed himself up from the bed and marched to the kitchen to get a glass of water. He half expected her to follow, but she didn't. He drank the water, put the glass into the sink and settled to stare at the blueish dusky landscape through the window. She seemed to be keeping her distance and that suited him just fine.

  
The dream was still there, lingering in the borderland of his consciousness.

  
_The body remembers even if the mind doesn't._ He had heard it from someone. Or had read it from somewhere. Either or. _Who cares?_

  
The light outside was changing. The rising sun coloured the highest peaks in a bright, almost artificial tint of orange. The foothills were still in the shadow of the horizon, and the contrast against the mountains made the shadowed landscape seem darker.

  
_If my body remembers the pain_, he thought as he watched the orange light fall down the mountains' side, _then how about the rage?_

  
_Are my feelings an echo from my past?_

  
_Did the pain create the rage or was it there even before the pain?_

  
He closed his eyes and frowned trying to abandon the route to which his thoughts were heading. But the dream waited behind the closed eyelids.

  
_He was strapped down to a steel table: he could feel the wide leather restraints on his arms, torso and legs. They were bound tight and he couldn't move at all, not even his head. His hands were strapped down too, palms against the cool, keen steel._

  
_There was a set of eight blinding lights over him. A lamp of an operation theatre he realised. He couldn't see beyond the light, but he could hear people talking. It didn't make any sense. He couldn't make out the words, couldn't hear what they were saying. They were talking about him. He knew it: they were talking about him._

  
_The panic hit him. It exploded in his chest and it ran through his veins, through his body, through his mind. And he wanted out, out, out, but he couldn't and then there was a face and he screamed, screamed with terror, but the anger was there too, lying behind the fear, waiting. He knew that the rage would always be there._

  
He forced his eyes open. His pulse was racing and his hands trembled as he opened the tap and let the water run over his head and face. The ice-cold water stung his skin, but it washed the panic away.

  
He calmed down a bit and he smelled Grace in the kitchen.

  
“What's the matter?” she said.

  
He closed the tap and wiped his face with a tea towel. It smelled of soap and slightly sour grease.

  
“A flashback - I think.”

  
“The same as the dream?”

  
He thought about it. “Same place, but a different time.”

  
She opened a closet and handed a proper towel to him. He dried his hair with it, rubbing briskly with both hands. She watched for a while and then turned to leave. He let the towel drop to his shoulders.

  
“Grace?”

  
She turned back towards him.

  
“Promise me you will kill me if I someday ask you to.”

  
She crossed her arms and squinted looking at him, but then said: “I will, I promise.”

  
“No questions asked and no tears shed.”

  
“Your death is your own, Logan, no-one else’s.” Her eyes turned darker and she stared into the distance through him. This time he waited for her to speak.

  
“Any plans?”

  
Logan leered turning to her. “Yeah.” He halted at her shoulder on his way back to the living room. “I will find the sons of bitches who made me into what I am,” he said with a voice lacerated with malice, “and I will make them pay.”

  
* * *

  
Logan stormed past me into the living room. I picked the towel from the floor and spread it out over the edge of the sink to dry. I glanced out through the window and felt a nudge in my mind. I closed my eyes and let my consciousness fan out through the house into the living room where he was standing, frozen on his feet in the middle of the room; through the walls to the porch, to the backyard, across the yard and the fields; through the barn and the stables.  
  
I opened my eyes and followed in his footsteps to the living room. He was still standing where I had felt him, eyes closed and listening.

  
“Logan,” I whispered quietly. He raised his hand to hush me. I waited.

  
He turned to me after a moment, eyes narrow with a concerned frown.

  
“Grace,” he whispered almost too quietly to hear, “I think there's someone outside.”

  
I took step closer and took him by the hand. I tapped the back of his hand gently with my thumb. “Do you know this?” I said.

  
“What?” He had a look of confused surprise on his face.

  
“This,” I said and repeated the gesture.

  
/Oh, you mean this,/ he sent back in Morse.

  
/Yes. They might be listening./

  
/OK,/ he sent and lifted his brow questioningly. I smiled in return.

  
“You are so fuckin’ gorgeous,” he said suddenly and pulled me by my hips in against his. Then his hand was cupping the back of my head, bending it backwards as he bit into the side of my throat. I froze, literally felt a bitting coldness rise through my legs and abdomen. He stopped and moved a little away from me to look into my eyes while still holding me in his grip. He frowned a little, just barely enough for it to be noticeable before his expression changed into something else, something more difficult to read. He moved his hands onto my sides just below the shoulder blades and held me there gazing at me thoughtfully. “You are so fuckin’ mesmerising, darlin’,” he noted. He turned me sideways, slipped an arm behind my knees lifted me up into his arms. He crossed the floor with few strides and laid me on the bed as he climbed on top of me.

  
The coldness in my abdomen became piercing as he covered my body with his and buried his face into my neck.

  
“ I had to do somethin’,” he whispered into my hair, “They might have thermographs or somethin’. You need to play along for a bit, got it?”

  
Made sense. We had already stood too long in the middle of the room doing nothing. I would have considered that suspicious if it had been me watching the imaging system. I nodded my head in agreement.

  
Logan run his hand down along my side, grabbed my hip when he reached it and pulled me with him as turned to his side. Somehow he had managed to leave his right arm under my neck as a pillow.

  
“You’re right, darlin’,” he said more louder but still softly enough for it to sound like an intimate conversation, “It is a bit too soon. You just are so fuckin’ beautiful.” He had left his left palm rest on my hip.

  
The coldness receded a little, moved away from my abdomen a bit further back into my legs, and it thawed, slightly, as it moved. I let my body relax, told it to relax into his hold. “Thank you. I just need a bit more time, handsome.”

  
He chuckled, more warmly than I would have expected. I lifted my arm around his waist, but he moved it away and guided me to turn around so that he could spoon me. He pulled me in tight agains him, arm over my midsection and palm pushed under me. I heard and felt how he inhaled deeply as he rubbed his cheek agains the back of my head. He held the breath for a moment before letting his body soften as he exhaled. /We need to find out how where they are,/ he tapped against my rib.

  
I pushed my hand under me and under his palm. /There is one behind the corner of the stables and another at the far end. Two behind the barn. Five in the woods in the east. One behind the trees in the field. Three in the woods in the west./

  
“You smell too good, you know.” /Thirteen./

  
/That I know of./

  
/How do you know?/ he asked.

  
/I have my ways. Trust me./

  
He squirmed adjusting his body, but then settled down. /We need a plan./

  
/We can't go out now. They could make their move right then./ Who ever they were, they were clearly waiting for something. Otherwise they would have acted already. If we made our move now, they might be inclined to use more force than their plan required. We were already outnumbered. There was no need to make it even more uneven.

  
Logan seemed to be thinking along the same lines with me. /They would know that we know if we do something right now. Let's wait till morning./

  
/If they storm in?/ I asked.

  
Logan didn't reply for a while.

  
/Don't think so. They have the advantage in the open. They first tried to ambush me in my sleep. Twice before they took the hint. They will wait./

  
I considered the field.

  
/True. Let's wait./

  
* * *

  
He was warm.  
  
We were lying on our sides and his left arm was wrapped around my waist, holding me gently to his chest. It was hard not to delve into him. The taste of electricity was percolating through my skin where ever he was touching me. I tried to relax, but it only made things worse and I felt a nausea rise in my gut.

  
“What's wrong?” he whispered into my ear.

  
“Nothing,” I lied.

  
“Don't lie to me. I can smell it.”

  
“Don't worry about it. It's nothing.”

  
He was silent for some time. His chest pushed against my back as he inhaled slowly and deep. He pulled his arm back, tucked it between us and pushed his whole body away from me. I sighed as the electric taste subsided in me.

  
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked sounding hollow. “Why? You weren't before.”

  
“It's not you,” I said and turned to him.

  
“What then? There ain’t nobody else in here.”

  
Nice touch. “I don’t know,” I said being honest.

  
He looked past me not believing what I was saying. I took him by his hand again.

  
/Do you know what there is inside you?/

  
/Yes. A killer. An animal./

  
/No. I mean inside your body, around your bones./

  
He stifled a jolt and pulled his hand away. I waited in the pale early morning light.

  
He took hold of my hand again.

  
/Yes. Steel./ He avoided my eyes.

  
/It's not steel I think./

  
/What then?/

  
/I don't know. I should take a closer look to find out./

  
/You want to cut me open,/ he sent staring at me, scowling.

  
I scowled back disapprovingly.

  
/Remember the suspended animation?/

  
He nodded and brushed a lock of hair away from my cheek.

  
/I can leave my body partially to delve into someone and I can see into them. Feel their insides so to speak./ I couldn't help smiling slyly. I have been told I have a morbid sense of humour.

  
He stared at me expressionlessly.

  
/Can you read my mind?/

  
/No,/ I admitted. /It is not telepathy. It's different./

  
/Is that how you know about them?/ He kept brushing my hair with his hand. The coldness started to creep back into me, but I forced it out.

  
/Yes. It can be used to scan my environs./

  
He considered something.

  
/Is that how you found me?/

  
/Yes and no. My friends found you first./

  
/And these friends of yours. Who are they?/

  
/I would prefer not to tell./

  
That did visibly bother him, but he said nothing.

  
I could have sworn he pricked up his ears as he listened to a sound inaudible to me.

  
/Someone is moving just outside the house./ He focused back to me and smiled crookedly. “I think it's time for you to do your thing, darlin’."

  
I closed my eyes and merged, but there was no-one to be found behind the walls. I dispersed further out and found the soldiers where they had been before. Logan moved leaning closer to me and I opened my eyes.

  
“You tricked me.” I felt the anger fuming in my voice. He sniffed my neck just below the ear nonchalantly.

  
“You know your scent changes when you do that?” he breathed into my ear before pulling back. He laid his hand on my shoulder. /I wanted to see what happens,/ he sent. /It is good to know that you cannot be taken by surprise when you do that./

  
I delved into him.

  
The taste of electricity greeted me the minute I moved past his skin, but I ground my teeth together and moved past the panic too. The metal had taken me by surprise the first time around and the present repulsion was born from that first panicked retreat, not from the metal itself.

  
So I delved deeper in.

  
I knew he could feel me doing it. I made a few changes around the wrist and elbow, moved up to the shoulder and closed the deal. His hand was locked to my shoulder, and I was safe from an abrupt disconnection.

  
I knew he knew what I had done. He tried to move his arm the moment I changed the flow in his shoulder. He said something, cursed probably, but didn't try anything stupid.

  
There was a metal casing surrounding his bones. It covered every bone in a thin, smooth layer immaculately adapting where ever a vein, a muscle or a tendon connected with the bone, or where a cartilage joined the smooth metal bone.

  
It was astonishing, absolute.

  
I knew where it came from.

  
I moved to the surface, skimming barely below the skin and I opened my eyes.

  
“I know now, Logan.” His hand was still frozen to my shoulder and I saw fear tint the colour of his eyes. I released his arm and delved out properly. He jerked his arm back closing his fist tightly.

  
“I'm sorry,” I said. His eyes were cold. I moved my hand slowly to his forearm. /I was right. It is not steel but adamantium./

  
“What?”

  
/Adamantium. It is practically indestructible. And it cannot be removed from your bones, not anymore./ His expression was hard and desolate.

  
“I'm sorry,” I whispered and stroked his hair away from his eyes.

  
“I told you no tears.”

  
“And there will be none in the end,” I promised.

  
* * *

  
He snuggled up closer to her and realised that she had been sleeping when she stirred up sharply. He moved slightly away remembering her discomfort earlier.  
  
“Grace, it's just me,” he said and she turned onto her back yawning. “Did you sleep well, darlin’?”

  
She glanced at him with an amused smile in her eyes. “Fine,” she answered and took his hand. “And you?”

  
“I didn't sleep.” He tapped her hand gently: /We should get ready./

  
She nodded.

  
“I had a dream,” She said and climbed over him to get off the bed. Logan let his eyes follow the curvature of her flank and hips as she moved past him. ”I was standing in front of a huge army, thousands of men clad up in leather and bronze.” She disappeared into the kitchen. He got up, stretched and went after. She had put the kettle on and was cutting bread into thick slices. He leaned against the counter top and peered though the window. He couldn’t see anything out of ordinary but he hadn’t really expected see anything. He knew that who ever it was out there, they were proficient at their trade. _They are good but not good enough._

  
“It was unbelievably hot and the ground was cracked and there was sand in my mouth and dust in my eyes. A soldier brought me a cup of water and I drank it.” She took bacon from the fridge and handed it to him. He grabbed a frying pan from a shelf next to the oven and put it on the gas stove.

  
“Got any eggs?” he asked.

  
“Aye, in the fridge,” she said. The water began to boil and she made tea. “You'd better make the coffee yourself if you want some.”

  
Logan smiled to himself and put the bacon into the pan. “Yeah, sure. Just leave me some water.”

  
They ate the breakfast talking occasionally about made-up plans for the day. Grace finished first, closed her eyes and sat still for some time. He watched her from under his brow as he ate the last of the bacon and eggs. She seemed relaxed now. The scent of fear that he had picked up earlier in the early hours of the morning was gone. Logan let his eyes rest on her throat. He remembered the taste of her skin. She opened her eyes and took her plate to the kitchen. She returned with a short staff in her hand.

  
“We should get going. I don’t want to be late,” she said. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, got up, took his jacket and put it on. She waited patiently. He met her by the door and hugged her.

  
/Are they still there?/ he sent tapping her back with his finger.

  
/Yes. The same layout./

  
“Remember what you promised,” he said. Her hair smelled of sleep, earth and anticipation.

  
“Don't worry about it. I'll be here when you need me.” He felt her fingers on his neck, close to the scar. /We’ll head for the car, OK/

  
“Alright.” He cupped her face with his hands and kissed her.

  
She pulled away and opened the front door.

  
“You didn't tell me how the dream ended,” he said and stepped out first pushing her aside on his way out.

  
“Oh, right. Like I said, I was walking along the first line of the phalanges,” she said casually as they crossed the porch. He heard movement from his left and gave her the slightest nod to indicate the direction the sound had come form. He stepped down to the yard and waited for her.

  
“Then the men took their shields and drew their swords, and I secured my helmet.” She went past him, heading for the car only a few more steps away. A gush of wind brought a scent to his nose and a low growl escaped his lips. She glanced over her shoulder at him. He waved his hand dismissively.

  
“I smiled to my men and they grinned back full of confidence for their skills of combat and the justifiability of their cause.” She reached the car. He felt his hackles rise.  
“And then someone gave the sign and -, “she said and opened the door.

  
Something hit Logan on the shoulder and he let his claws out. Grace took cover between the open door and the car and he dived after her. He took a quick look around to confirm that they were out of sight for the time being. He looked at Grace and she winked her eye at him. Suddenly she shrieked wordlessly making him jump.

  
“Oh please, God, help me!” she screamed. “He's gonna kill me! Oh please, help me, please!”

  
He stood up pulling her along and shielding his body with hers. He held her still with his left arm across her chest and pressed his right hand claws to her throat drawing a little blood to show he meant business.

  
“Quit hidin’ and get out where I can see you or the bitch gets it!” he yelled at the hazy morning shadows and backed towards the house. He stumbled feeling disoriented and realised that the hit on his shoulder had been a dart of a tranquilliser gun. Grace screamed as he floundered again, and he prayed that his healing-ability could take care of the drug.

  
“Do it, now!” he shouted feeling the panic rise inside him. “Get out into the open now or I will slice this lyin’ whore open right here and now!” His peripheral vision was getting blurry and he stumbled yet again. The closest six soldiers stepped forward, assault riffles pointed at him.

  
He swallowed, fighting the urge to bolt.

  
“It's them,” he said to her. “I caught their scent earlier and it's them.” He was wavering and he knew he would not have much longer. He couldn't shrug off the drug; they knew what would take him out.

  
“This won't work. This won't work, Grace.”

  
Her scent changed and he felt her move inside him.

  
/Logan, trust me,/ she sent through his forearm. /You will soon be fine, but you will collapse first./

  
“No, no, no!” he half screamed, half growled. The soldiers came closer and he waved his claws at them. “Keep clear!” he warned them, but they paid no attention to his shriek. He howled, pushed her aside and fell to the ground barely half a step into a leap at the closest soldier.

  
He came around quickly. Grace was still screaming and sobbing on the ground near by, and the soldiers were coming slowly closer. He kept his eyes closed and waited.

  
“Thank God you're here,” he heard her say. “He wouldn't let me leave! He wouldn't let me go! Thank God you're here!” She sounded hysterical and he felt doubt crawl into his mind.

  
He concentrated on the sounds.

  
Grace stood up; the first of the soldiers would soon be within his reach. Grace kept babbling in the background. Somebody came next to him and gave him a good kick to the ribs. Some of the muscles tore apart and healed. He didn't react. It was nothing. A walk in the park in, a piece of cake.

  
The rage surfaced in him. It followed the same course the panic had taken, creeping through his body like magma. It suffocated the fear and the doubt, and he let it come.

  
It made him feel clear, focused, but he knew it wouldn't last.

  
“What are you doing?” he heard Grace cry out, “Why are you pointing those guns at me? I've done nothing! Please -.”

  
Logan leaped up taking the soldier next to him down with a punch through the breastplate. He smelled the blood, growled and lacerated the throat of the second soldier with his left hand claws. He took down three more soldiers before the remaining ones opened fire at him. He charged at them, ignored the bullets that buried into him and cut the men open, howling.

  
He spun around. Grace was standing near the car with a katana in her hand and five bodies at her feet. There was blood on her face and her clothes. Some of it appeared to be her own.

  
His wounds healed. His body discarded the bullets left in him, pushing them out. The deformed bullets clinked quietly as they hit the ground.

  
He was still enraged, leering over the slaughter, growling softly. He embraced the feeling for a while, but then it subsided and he felt cold.

  
Grace wiped the blade clean with the torn jacket of one of the dead soldiers and sheeted it. The sword turned back into a staff.

  
Logan looked down at his hands. The claws were still extended, covered in blood and sheared flesh. There was blood on his hands, arms, chest and torso; over his thighs and knees and lower legs. It seeped through his clothing and he felt sticky, disgusted. The after-effects of the adrenalin rush made his muscles tremble.

  
“Eejits,” she spat.

  
“What?” He was confused. The blood on his hands had begun to dry and it stretched his skin uncomfortably.

  
“Idiots,” she repeated. “They should've shot us the minute we closed the door behind us. Or on the steps at the latest.” She pushed one of the bodies over with her foot. The blade had cut the man almost in half, slicing him from the left shoulder to the right hip.

  
_They have a name especially for that cut_, he thought and tried to remember it, but the name slunk back into the haziness of his mind. _Makes no difference to him, I suppose. He's still dead._

  
“We got them all,” said Grace as she walked towards Logan, stepping over the dead on her way.

  
He took a quick look around.

  
“I guess so.” He kneeled down next to the man he had killed first. The claws had pierced the breastplate nicely, evidently puncturing right into his heart. Every single one of the claws. _Like some damn cardio surgery_, he thought and lifted the body to take a look at the backside. The claws had passed through the man cutting his spine along the way.

  
That wasn't the first time I did that. He felt oddly proud and pleased. He let the body fall back down.

  
Logan stood up and counted the bodies himself. Something in the mayhem didn't add up.

  
“Where's the RTO?”

  
“They don’t call them that anymore. The combat signaller is over there.” She pointed towards the eastern woods. “And dead,” she added. She was going through the bodies, checking their belts and pockets. He left her to it and headed towards the tree line.

  
He rinsed his hands in a rainwater barrel at the corner of the house before retracting the claws. Grace had found something and was standing amongst the carnage, studying it. She had tucked the staff sword under her arm. She seemed satisfied and dropped that something on the dead soldier's chest. She headed for the stables. He followed her with his eyes until she disappeared behind the building.

  
The sun was well above the horizon now, radiating light and warmth and false compassion across the landscape.

  
_It's nice up here_, he thought as he turned his back to the house and continued towards the forest. _Nice and quiet._


	6. Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trust, but verify.  
\- Russia proverb

* * *

Nick showed up few seconds after Logan had left. He emerged from the eastern forest carrying the signaller’s comm unit in his hand and a cigar between his teeth. I sat down on the steps.

  
Nick remained standing. He fiddled with the comm unit misleadingly oblivious to anything else, grunted approvingly and tossed the equipment towards the closest corpse in a lazily executed arch.

  
“They are getting better every year,” he remarked.

  
I leaned backwards on my elbows against the porch floor.

  
“Aye, they do, don't they. Did you manage to get glimpse of Logan before he left?”

  
He smoked for a while in silence.

  
“Yeah, I did,” he said, “and I know why he seems familiar.”

  
I stood up.

  
“I have met him before. Briefly, but on several occasions.” He dropped the cigar to the ground and stubbed it out with the heel of his boot. “I pretty sure you have met him too.”

  
“I suspected that much, but I can't place him.”

  
“Remember when I was in Vietnam and you dropped in to give a hand with that black ops fiasco?”

  
“Aye, the Tonkin ghost ship incident. '65 was it?”

  
“'64, but who's counting?” We both smiled. “He,” Nick said nodding at the road and long-gone Logan, “was one of the black ops fellows.”

  
“But I thought he was a genuine Canuck?”

  
Nick laughed: “Believe me, he is. To the bone. He was a mercenary back then.”

  
I chewed my lower lip trying to remember. I recollected the weight of the humidity at night and the operation itself, but the faces of the men we had removed from the war space remained in the dark.

  
_Typical_, I thought.

  
“I'm not surprised if you don't remember him. You met him only once. He was one mean son of a bitch back then.” Nick looked at the corpses. “Still is it seems.”

  
“Did he have the claws back then?”

  
“Can't really say,” Nick confessed. “I never saw him use them, but the lack of evidence for something is not evidence to the contrary.” I couldn’t help smiling at his statement. Nick continued: “Who knows. The claws are a pretty basic augmentation. They could have been there decades before the adamantium bonding.”

  
One more reason we needed to take a closer look at Wolverine. Nick checked the time from his wristwatch.

  
“The boys will be here any minute now.”

  
“I really am sorry about the mess, Nick.”

  
“I wish I could say it wasn't your fault,” he said forcing me to meet his gaze, “but that wouldn't be true, now would it?”

  
“I honestly didn't expect anything like this.” I stuffed my hands in the back pockets of my jeans and ran my eyes over the yard. “At first I thought he was just plain paranoid and anything like this seemed so, I don’t know, paranoid.” I sighed and decided to go in. Nick followed me and chose to sink into the couch when we got in. I sat down at the opposite end.

  
“I didn't take his paranoia seriously, not before those lads showed up.”

  
“I told you to stay sharp, didn't I?”

  
“Yeah, yeah. But still -.”

  
Outside the wind picked up suddenly and beat the dead soldiers pulling their clothes and hair and raising a thin dust storm from the ground.

  
“Oh good, the boys are here,” Nick said and leaned over to pat my knee. “I'll be right back.”

  
* * *

  
Logan watched the two transport helicopters take off and head south. He waited until Grace had gone back in before leaving. He crawled backwards for the first few yards retracing his path through the undergrowth. He then turned around, crawled forward all the way back to the old ravine-like ditch and followed it, crouching, until he reached the road. Only then did he stand up properly, dusted his clothes and climbed into the car Grace had given him.  
  
_She might be one of them_, he thought. _Who else would have friends like that._

  
He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. Something turned in his stomach.

  
“You fuckin' lyin' bitch,” he said out loud. _I took your word for it._

  
_I took your word for it and this is who you are._

  
He squeezed the wheel with his hands, knuckles white and itching, and he screamed growling against the dashboard. The rage made his hackles rise.  
He sat up, mouth in a thin line and started up the engine.

  
_You said you would kill me if I asked you to._

  
_You promised._


	7. Miens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I did kill her that time, he thought all of a sudden.  
I kill things.  
That's what I do.  
That's what I'm best at.

* * *

  
  
_The war hound lopes through tall late-summer grass. The grass parts in front of it and closes behind it, and the prairie remains the same, unchanged, with no signs left of the hound's passage._

  
_I fly high above the land, unseen, riding the rising currents. I watch the wind move across the landscape, and the grass waves, yielding, rising like a soft, yellow-green ocean. The wind is soundless, but the grass whispers and sighs as the wind moves through it. The song of grass hides the sound of the running dog, and all I see is its black back ploughing through the sea of green._

  
  
* * *

  
Logan put the last fork-full of the blueberry pie into his mouth, chewed squeezing the filling against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, then swallowed and licked his lips. He pushed the plate slightly away and grabbed the half full cup of coffee by wrapping his fingers around the stoneware; the warmth was comforting. He took a sip, grunted happily, leaned back against the booth's chestnut backrest and looked out through the diner's window.  
  
Out of the blue she was there, Grace, standing on the other side of the street, talking with a well-built man in a black leather biker's jacket. Her hair was longer than it had been six years ago, not significantly so, but longer nevertheless. She wore pale olive-green cargo pants and an old navy blue jacket, the same one she had had when she had found him in the forest.

  
_Six years and she hasn't changed_, Logan thought as he watched them discuss something. _More than six years and that bitch is still the same._

  
The man looked at his watch and said something to Grace. She looked at hers, agreed and put her hands in her jacket pockets. He nodded, said something in addition and leaned forward to hold her face with his hands and kissed her. She laughed and he left. She shouted something after him and he turned, waved his hand and went on. She waved back, put her hand back in the pocket and prepared to cross the road.

  
_She's comin' here._

  
She kept her eye on the traffic, walked and then jogged the last few steps to make way for a dark green Ford. Her hands never left the pockets.

  
Logan turned away and drained his coffee. He laid the cup down.

  
_I should be gone already._

  
In the corner of his eye he saw her open the door and walk to the counter. He heard her order an ice-tea and a beef sandwich.

  
He didn't smell them, but then again: he had told her about the scent.

  
Logan let his eyes wander across the room. It was quiet: well past the breakfast, an hour or so to go before the lunch. There was a middle-aged couple at the back of the diner eating an early lunch and talking about a mortgage; a young woman by the window reading a fat, large format hard cover book, making occasional notes in the margins and eating her soup when she remembered; three postal workers in the middle of the room laughing loudly and drinking coffee; and Grace by the counter. He had been there for roughly half an hour and only the student with her book had arrived after him.

  
And now Grace.

  
Life had been relatively quiet for Logan after he had left Grace's. Nobody had come after him, no-one, and it had felt strange at first. He had been so used to being on his toes all the time, to the constant worrying about everything and everyone, and he had forgotten the incessant, ever-present fear. He had remembered the fear only after he had realised that he had been left alone and that had been the most fearsome thing of all. It had scared the shit out of him. It had felt as though all the forgotten fear had struck him all at once and he had panicked, completely. How can you forget that you are afraid?

  
He had been far up north, driving on a seldom used forest road on his way to the next nameless town, when the ocean of fear had claimed him. He had stopped the truck on the spot, had run out into the wilderness leaving the engine running and the door wide open. He had run for his life, or so he had believed, and had stopped only when his body had given up on him and he had fallen to the ground. He had crawled on as fast as he could for a while, using the claws to help pull himself further, but then he had felt sick and had vomited, violently.

  
The utter exhaustion had won over the panic. Things had cleared up and he had returned to the car, skulking and legs trembling. The engine had run out of gas, but otherwise things had been as he had left them.

  
The anger had taken over after that. The fear had vanished and he had been filled with cold rage against all and everything, especially against them and her, though sometimes he briefly missed her – and the sword.

  
Now she was there, sitting on a high stool, back partly turned towards him. She chatted idly with the waiter while he put the ice-cubes into a tall glass and poured ice-tea over them. He cut the sandwich in half when it arrived from the kitchen and provided the preferred choice of small, complimentary dessert to go with it. She chose a ripe Golden Delicious-apple; Logan could catch its scent all the way across the room. Grace settled the bill right away, put the apple into her pocket, took the plate and the glass, turned around to find a place to sit at, and saw him.

  
She smiled with surprise; he tried to hold on to a blank expression.

  
_I was wrong_, Logan thought as he watched her sit down at his table, _she has changed._

  
Grace sat there, in front of him, smiling (contently, he thought). She had laid the ice-tea down on the table and her hand was still holding the sweating glass loosely. The waiter did his round around the diner asking if everybody was okay, and he filled up Logan's cup even though he didn't reply. Grace smiled at the waiter and lifted her brow apologetically.

  
“So,” she said after the waiter had gone, “how are you? Are the dreams still keeping you company at night?”

  
Logan offered no answer. He drank a mouth-full from the cup discarding the bitter, poignant taste of black coffee on his palate. She seemed to be reading something into it, but did not comment on it. She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.

  
“Did you get away okay?” she asked after the third bite.

  
Logan put his hands under the table. A passing car caught his eye and he followed the white van until it turned left at the end of the block.

  
She still smelled of earth and horses.

  
“Yeah, sure,” he said and turned back to face her. She smiled as she ate.

  
“How has it been since then? Any trouble from, you know, them?”

  
Logan leaned forward until his upper arms touched the table's edge.

  
“No. None.”

  
“Really? None at all?”

  
Logan frowned. He couldn't decide whether her surprise was genuine or not.

  
“You heard me just fine, darlin’.”

  
She stared at him for a while.

  
“Aye, I guess I did.” She finished the sandwich and wiped her mouth with a yellow napkin. The postal workers got up, payed and left. The couple at the back was getting ready to go.

  
“Is everything alright?” she asked quietly. Her concern smelled genuine, but he wasn't willing to trust his senses. Not this time.

  
“Who's he?”

  
She frowned questioningly.

  
“The biker across the street.”

  
She smiled understanding. “He's Nick, Nick Fury.”

  
“Who's he to you? A friend, a boyfriend, husband?” Logan paused to lift an eyebrow mockingly. “A lover?”

  
Grace laughed softly, but turned then serious and looked out at the steadily growing traffic. The ephemeral scents of love, friendship and lust drifted across the table in succession.

  
“We go back a long way, Nick and I,” she said. “A long way.” She looked at her hands on the table and then at him. “We are friends, marrows, and we used to be more – from time to time.” Her stance mirrored the melancholy of her words.

  
Logan granted himself a smirking smile. “Oh, I see.”

  
She emptied her glass and played with it.

  
“I never heard anything about it in the news,” he noted. “How did you manage that, darlin’?"

  
“Did you really expect to hear about it?” Logan smelled the frustration that her words carried.

  
“Do you expect me to believe that you just left them lyin’ around and took off?” He leaned over the table. “Come on, darlin', you can tell me. Where did you hide the bodies?” he whispered like a co-conspirator.

  
“I just took my stuff, loaded it on the horses and rode away. It's easy to disappear into the wilderness up there and you know it.”

  
“How brave of you to trust that they wouldn't make a fuss about it. Or stupid.”

  
“I knew they wouldn’t," she said smelling slightly exasperated.

  
“Oh, you knew, darlin'? How come?”

  
“For fuck's sake, Logan. You knew that as well as I did or you wouldn't have agreed to leave before sorting out the mess.” The couple with a mortgage gave her a disapproving look as they walked past on their way out.

  
“You for sure had one helluva way to sort it out,” he hissed at her. The woman of the couple turned to look at him at the door and he snarled at her. She fled out after her man.

  
Grace was squinting when he looked at her. Her scent had changed and he smelled danger.

  
“What do you mean, Logan?” she said carefully.

  
“I saw you and him,” he nodded towards the street, “and the choppers and the doggies. I saw what you did, darlin'. I saw you.”

  
Her pupils dilated and he smelled caution almost strong enough to be fear.

  
“So,” he smiled baring his teeth, “the thing is, I can't figure out why you let me go.”

  
Her eyes narrowed slightly.

  
“You are your own man, Logan. It was your choice to go.”

  
He laughed briefly leaning back. “Yeah, right,” he said when he was serious again, “sure it was.” He pulled his right hand from under the table and pointed his finger casually at her. “You've been playin' me all the way, but not any more.” He laid his hand on the table.

  
Grace stared at his hand. The young woman slammed suddenly her book shut, collected her belongings hurriedly and stormed out. The sudden noise startled Logan and he winced.

  
“You know, Logan,” Grace said quietly, “things aren't always what they seem to be.”

  
Logan whipped his head around.

  
“No kiddin', darlin’." He scowled and moved his left hand onto the table. He let her stare at his hands for a moment before clenching his hands into fists as the blades moved under the skin. He let the claws move forward, against the skin, and he watched as the points cut through. Light reflected from a window of a passing car, and sun danced on adamantium.

  
“I know what you did to me.”

  
Grace met his gaze with puzzlement. The rage felt hot, enforcing, but it changed. Eventually he tipped his head forward and to the left to hide how he closed his eyes.

  
“I remember more now. The dreams are more clear and detailed,” he said, with malice. His voice trembled. “I remember what you did to me. I remember. I never forgot.”

  
“Logan, I swear it wasn't us.”

  
His neck burned where her sword had cut him.

  
“Get up.”

  
She remained sitting for few breaths, but then stood up. The smell of fear was gone.

  
  
* * *

  
Logan drove the truck into a vacant plot in the outskirts of the town. He seemed sullen; sad and  
angry all at once, but more determined than I had ever seen him be. He parked the car along a pile of rusted oil drums and turned off the engine.  
  
It was a fine day: blue skies with a touch of winter purple and a shadow of red in the maple leaves. His hands remained on the wheel as he sulked over what he had been forced to suffer all those years ago. I turned away to watch how the tall withered grass yielded to the wind.

  
“Now what?” I asked eventually.

  
His jaw muscles rippled as he scowled.

  
“Now,” he said as he turned towards me, “now you're gonna tell me everythin’."

  
I sighed. “I can't. I'm sorry but I can’t.”

  
He laughed with darkness in his voice.

  
“I think you're missin' the point here, darlin’.” He let go of the wheel and rested his right elbow on the seat's backrest. “I ain't askin', I'm just sayin' what will happen.”

  
“And I'm saying I can't tell you, Logan, not everything.”

  
“I'm sorry to hear that. I'd rather didn’t.”

  
“Logan, you can't touch me. You know what I can do if you touch me.”

  
“I only need to touch you once.”

  
I smiled: “I can't argue with that.”

  
He looked me into the eyes and smiled. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

  
I opened the door and got out, he didn't object. The wind smelled of the coming cold and snow. I closed my eyes and let the air move through me.

  
Logan had got out too and was leaning against the truck's roof with arms crossed, chin on his forearm. There was a hint of contentment in his pose.

  
“But it's still a stalemate,” I said.

  
He remained motionless for a moment. The wind picked up and ruffled his black mane gently. He pushed himself away from the truck and walked around it with a measured gait. He came to stand in front of me, crossed his arms again and leaned his back against the car.

  
“I suppose you're right,” he said and squinted as he looked at me along his nose. “I really don't seem to have much leverage on you here.”

  
“No, you don’t.”

  
Suddenly he smiled with uncharacteristic genuineness. I frowned before I could help myself.

  
“I tried so hard to scare you back then,” he explained. “To really scare the living daylights out of you, but you were one fuckin' fearless bitch back then.”

  
I laughed and he smiled again.

  
“All that hard work for nothin'. I never smelled fear on you.” He sneered slightly. “It really pissed me off, you know.”

  
I nodded.

  
“So I thought I never would.” He stood up, walked to me and stood still by my shoulder looking at the distance somewhere behind me. “But I did today,” he almost growled, “and it felt so fuckin' good to smell you and to know that it was me who put that fear in you.”

  
He circled around me.

  
“So maybe I do have some leverage on you.” He leaned against the car again. “It just ain't what I thought it would be.”

  
I shrugged my shoulders. “That really doesn't mean much here. I can't tell you everything. It's as simple as that.”

  
“I know you didn't want me to see what you did with the corpses, Grace. I know you killed the RTO in the woods. I don't know how you managed that, but I smelled you on him.”

  
The rough, coarse ray fish skin cut into my palm and I felt the weight of the sword in my hand and on my soul.

  
“Aye, I did kill him,” I said surprising us both with the dolorousness of my voice. I rubbed my palm against my thigh to scour the feeling away. The feeling persisted, and he looked at me tilting his head curiously. I smelled blood and I looked down at my hand to see how it shook. I clenched the hand into a fist hoping that the shaking would vanish, but it didn't. The air felt hot in my lungs, and the redness in the leaves and in the rust on the drums burned my eyes. I looked at him.

  
* * *

  
Grace reeked of fear. She rubbed her hand compulsively against her thigh, over and over again, hard. She looked at her palm, gasped and grasped the wrist with her left hand. Her fingers turned white as she squeezed the wrist as if to prevent something from spreading. She looked at him and he recognised the look in her eyes. Her fear infiltrated him.

  
“Grace?”

  
She sunk on her knees struggling for breath. Her hands shook almost uncontrollably and she fell forward on them, palms against the ground. He smelled blood as the grass turned red under her hand; her right palm was bleeding somehow. She whispered something, but he didn't catch the words.

  
“Grace?”

  
She didn't seem to hear him. Logan took a step closer and she finally lifted her head. She looked straight at him.

  
“I shouldn’t have used it. I should never have accepted it.” Her eyes were dark and he doubted if she could truly see him.

  
He took another step towards her.

  
“Accepted what?"

  
“The sword. I should’ve never used it.”

  
_Sweet Mother of God. This ain't what I thought it would be._

  
_This is fuckin' better._

  
Logan had wondered about the sword. He had spent quite sometime reading about Japanese swords. He had visited museums and watched documentaries. It had turned out he already knew quite a lot and that his first impressions had been right: the sword she used to behead her had been something rare, more than legendary, almost mythical. Not that that in itself meant anything, there were countless myths concerning Japanese swords and weapons. It was this particular sword he obsessed about, her sword, her secrets.

  
He glanced quickly around to see if they were alone, but he had chosen the location well. The pile of oil-drums hid them from the casual traffic and the wire-fence was fortified by bushes and high-grown grass. He crouched down on his haunches.

  
“Grace? Listen to me, Grace.” She turned her head towards him.

  
“You have to tell me about the sword, Grace.”

  
She smiled with sad eyes. “I can't. I've never…" She closed her eyes and frowned, thinking. Her scent changed, and Logan wondered if he had missed his opportunity.  
“If I tell you about the sword,” she said tentatively, “would it help to convince you, that it wasn't us who put the adamantium in you?"

  
How could a sword have anything to do with that? ”Would it explain everythin’?”

  
She opened her eyes.

  
“No.”

  
He kneaded his clasped hands. Grace pried a scarf out of her pocket and wiped most of the blood and dirt away; the scrapes had began to heal. She leaned her left hand against the ground and prepared to stand up. He seized her sword-hand with his left one, unfolded her fingers and ran his hand across her palm. She objected: he felt the tension in her muscles, but chose to ignore it.

  
“Tell me about the sword, Grace.”

  
She twisted her hand gently and he let her go. She wrapped the stained, grey scarf around her hand.

  
“I wish I could tell you everything,” she said intently. “You deserve to know.”

  
“I ain't askin' for your pity,” he said angrily.

  
“Don't. I…"

  
_She has changed._ He studied her features and found new lines around her eyes. _She was so fuckin' tough when we first met. Fearless._

  
_Or tired of life. Like I was – am_, he thought. A sarcastic grin flashed on his face.

  
_Somethin' has changed._

  
“Do you still want me to kill you?” she asked suddenly catching him slightly off balance.

  
_Do I?_

  
“Yeah.”

  
_I do?_

  
He felt he had to elaborate: “I still have some unfinished business to take care of, but eventually – yeah, I do.”

  
She merely nodded. A flock of starlings flew past the plot swirling, changing shape in unison like a monstrous organism, chirping. She bent her head all the way back and looked up to the sky.

  
“Remember the sword I used when I almost beheaded you?” she said and looked back at him.

  
“Yeah, the one in the lacquer box. The one with a name.” He glanced at the truck. “Shiokaze, right?”

  
“Aye, Sea-breeze,” she said with softness he remembered, “but there's another one, another sword.” She leaned forward and onto her hands. Her breathing turned shallow, and he smelled the stench of fear in his nose. She looked at him again, grinned nervously and sat up straight.

  
“This one is nameless. Or maybe it had a name once, a long time ago when it was made. I don't know.” She looked around searching for something he didn't see. The grass whispered as the wind moved through it and she extended her arm to feel the grass against her hand.

  
“This nameless sword,” he said when she seemed lost, “is it the one you used kill the soldiers?”

  
She hitched her head around and pushed herself a few inches away from him as if she had forgotten his presence. Logan lifted his hand and almost grabbed her by the shoulder. He remembered her ability and held still, arm stretched with open palm. He had risked touching her once already.

  
“Grace, I'm not – “ He pulled the arm back. “Just relax, Grace, and tell me about the sword.” He tried to sound as gentle as he possibly could and it surprised him.

  
She closed her eyes and breathed systematically for a moment. Her voice was calm when she spoke.

  
“There was a Japanese sword smith once. A real master with skills beyond mere mortal's they said. She frowned briefly. “Muramasa I think it was. Muramasa,” she repeated as if tasting the name to if it fit. She opened her eyes again.

  
“He made beautiful blades, keen and balanced. Worth their price most people thought.” She massaged her neck with her hand. “And his best swords will cut through everything, absolutely everything. It's said that's because the swords enjoy destruction, that they love the act of cutting itself.”

  
Logan smiled sardonically: “So real magical swords then.”

  
“Aye, you could say that.”

  
He laughed and stood up. “This is genuine bullshit, Grace.”

  
“No, the sharpness of the blades is just a result of craftsmanship, of skill and knowledge. There's nothing magical about that.” She bit her lower lip. “The magic lies elsewhere.”

  
He dropped down into a crouch on all fours, knuckles jammed against the ground.

  
“Bullshit, Grace, bullshit!” he growled at her face. At first she leaned back to make room for him, but then her expression changed.

  
“Give me your hand, Logan.”

  
“What?”

  
“Oh, you heard me.” She held her hand out demandingly. “Give me your hand, Logan.”

  
He hesitated. He didn't want to give in or to appear to be afraid of her and he was certainly not about to mistake stupidity for curiosity. Suddenly she seized his hand by the wrist. He felt her enter his body and found himself unable to resist when she commanded his hand to open and pressed it against her chest.

  
“Don't laugh at my magic, Logan,” she said softly with lethal sweetness in her voice. She smiled coyly as she studied his face and neck with her eyes. Her fingers around his wrist felt warm.

  
“Look, I'll show you what I mean. I'll show you real magic, Logan, real magic.” She lifted her left hand and pressed her palm against his chest. He wanted to pull back, but couldn't.

  
At first he felt nothing. He smelled her in his nose, the earth and horses; the autumn grass and the leaves; rusted iron of the drums; the truck and leaking engine-oil. Nothing special about it, only he couldn't free himself from her.

  
_I ain't tryin' hard enough._

  
He blinked and he saw himself.

  
He didn't get it at first. He tried to turn back towards Grace, but nothing happened. All he saw was himself on his knees amongst grass, Grace's hand on his chest. He looked down and saw his own hand with fingers spread wide on her.

  
“Well, hello there," she said with his mouth, but his face stayed motionless. “There's something I want you to see - Wolverine.” She closed his eyes.

  
_Her eyes. I'm in her head._

  
It wasn't seeing, not as such. It was an odd mixture of all the senses. He could taste the bones – and see them. He smelled the blood and felt its warmth on his forearms. The metal around his bones was more a flavour, a smoothness felt with his tongue and in his throat than an actual image in his eyes. It made him gag, but he couldn't since she didn't.

  
The body his mind remembered and believed still to be occupying began to tremble, but the body his senses perceived didn't. The heart was beating with a steady rhythm. The muscles were soft, relaxed.

  
She began to pull out of him. She backed up slowly, as if flying in reverse through a canyon of thousand yards but with only a few feet of width. The walls of the canyon pressed on him and the old feeling of being cornered crept through from his lost memories.

  
The motion of breathing was hard. The rhythm was strange, not his, but hers, and he began to run out of air.

  
Somewhere in the crimson light the adamantium sang to him. Its steel-sleek voice whispered words of comfort and rescue and safety into his ears, and the smooth touch of metal on his tongue tasted of sea and sugar. It had rescued him once. He knew it despite the lack of memory of it, but he knew it. He was certain of it. He remembered the song of adamantium and turned towards it. She resisted, but he fought it, somehow. Or maybe it was the song and the voice that fought her. He began to move forward again finding his own course through the canyon of flesh and bone and steel.

  
Around him the world of flesh blinked and it became dark. The scent and taste of his body remained in his mouth, but all else was pitch-black and he began to drift. The sensation of drifting turned into falling, and he fell down through the darkness feeling the ground closing fast on him. He tried to breathe harder, but the air was thin. There was no wind on his skin, no sound of air rushing past his ears as he fell downward through darkness thicker than oil. He struggled to stop the falling, tried to swim to the surface like a drowning swimmer would struggle against a current. The lack of oxygen burned in his lungs, and the falling continued. He would have screamed, but there was no air to form the sound.

  
He opened his eyes (_My eyes, not hers, mine._) and threw his arms forward against the ground to brake off the fall. He was dizzy, groggy, and the sensation of falling persisted. He fought to keep his eyes open and eventually the world around him returned to its relative normality. He spat out the blood from his mouth and a piece of his tongue to go along with it. He felt the wound with his finger, swallowed the remaining blood and the excess saliva that was building up in his throat and staggered up. The world swayed, then settled; his tongue hurt.

  
Another flock of starlings flew low past him. He crouched startled by the sudden noise of wings and almost fell. The chirping of the birds sounded mechanical in his ears and he grimaced with nauseous pain.

  
The flock passed and it was quiet again. Only the wind remained.

  
Grace had collapsed. Logan kneeled down beside her and flipped her around to her back. Her limbs followed the weight of her body with lifeless indifference, but there was a faint pulse inside her chest. He didn't have to concentrate to hear it, so it was okay enough.

  
He took her jacket off, sat down properly on the ground and searched the garment thoroughly. He checked the pockets and the lining, he ran his fingers along the seams twisting and bending the fabric until he was satisfied that it was only an old worn jacket with chafed cuffs and a missing button. He found a set of keys, the car keys, a wallet and a black notebook almost filled with writing and drawings but no pen.

  
There would be time to go through them later. He returned his attention to her.

  
He ran his hands over her quickly checking routinely all the obvious places. He expected to find nothing and was satisfied. The pen was in one of her trouser pockets.  
Her hair was gathered into a ponytail, so he opened the clasp and ran his fingers through her hair. He unbuttoned her shirt, searched the seams, the collar, the cuffs and the hemline, did the same to her T-shirt and found nothing. He then pulled her shirts up past her breasts and pushed his finger under her bra. It was a sports bra with no wires under the cups so it was easy to decide there was nothing hidden in it. He pulled her over to her side and checked the backside. After that he let her fall back to her back.  
He pulled her belt free from the trousers; there was nothing there. The belt itself was made of thick leather, probably cut from the centreline of the hide he thought. A bit long for her maybe, worn, but well cared for. The buckle was just a buckle.

  
He undid the button-fly on her trousers and pulled them down a bit to make room for his hands. He made sure there was nothing in the waistline or in the seams, and she had nothing taped to her inner thighs either. He found a small lump in her thigh, an inch or so below her groin, but it was somewhat soft and deformed: a tumour, maybe. He thought about it and then sniffed the skin hesitantly. It wasn't malign.

  
He considered cutting the soles of her boots open, but then decided that it would be paranoid in a wrong way. He did take the boots off though. Nothing.  
He took the notebook and the wallet, stood up and walked to his truck. There he sat down on his haunches, back rested against the door of the car, elbows on his knees. (The long grass hid most of her from his view.) He stretched his arms a little and let them hang relaxed over his knees. He swung the notebook thoughtfully between his thumb and index finger and followed its arch with his eyes.

  
_She's my only lead._

  
He went through the notebook page by page. She had written most of the notes in English, but every now and again he came across pages and passages written in two other languages unknown to him. He read what he could, but it didn't add up to much. The pages were filled with a variety of observations: of birds, animals, seasons, landscapes, weather; minute details and large-scale summaries illustrated with ink drawings and occasional touches of colour. There were drawings of people (He found a picture of himself, but he didn't linger on it.) and of built environs. At one point she had used several pages to draw different kinds of cars.

  
Some of the notes were lists of things to do, places to go, addresses of shops, accommodation and companies, but nothing came across as interesting or covertly meaningful. She had made the first entry roughly a year ago, the last one was only a few days old.

  
The two foreign languages meant nothing to him. The more common of the two was short-worded, rough and full of consonants; the rearer-one (there were only five or six entries written in it) was composed of long words and strings of vowels and it reminded him of Japanese written in roman alphabet.

  
_What the hell did you expect?_

  
_A list of covert operations?_

  
_Names and code names of the agents involved?_

  
_A written confession, signed and stamped with a judge's approval?_

  
He sat on the ground letting his back slide down along the door, crossed his arms on his knees and sulked for a while with his chin on is forearm. He thought he could make out the profile of her body through the grass. He put the wallet and the notebook into the clove compartment and went back to her. The grass reached all the way up to his knees and the thin, climbing weeds amongst it hugged his legs like tendrils as he waded through it. She lay as he had left her: partly undressed, on her back, left hand open on her belly.

  
_I did kill her that time_, he thought all of a sudden.

  
_I kill things._

  
_That's what I do._

  
_That's what I'm best at._

  
He decided to check her breathing and counted her exhales against the back of his hand. Her breathing was deep and strong, punctuated by several seconds of stillness after every outward breath. He let his hand touch her cheek and grazed the back his hand across her jaw and the side of her throat. He found the pulsating vein besides her windpipe and held still listening to the heartbeats with his fingers and his ears. He wondered if she could feel him on her. He stood up again. The grass billowed around her like green waves of a green ocean. An image of red waves caressing dead bodies on a black beach came to his mind. He caught a conjured smell of sulphur in his nose, but the image receded before it reached a state of full recollection.

  
_I have forgotten what it is to love._ There was a tight bundle of pain under his right shoulder plate.

  
_There's only death and pain in me. Death and pain and rage and hatred._

  
_It's what I am._

  
_Maybe it's all I am._

  
He kneeled down and pulled her shirts down proper. He covered her torso with the jacket and tucked its sides under her to keep her warm. The trousers were easier, but he left the belt off and stuffed it into his pocket instead. The boots, he decided, were not worth the trouble.

  
His hand got left resting on her thigh and he felt the growth through the garment. He didn't dare to look up to her face. He closed his eyes and filled his ears with the sound of the wind in the grass. The sound mutated into a rustling whisper in his mind; into a sound of countless round-ground pebbles born of volcanic rock and years of wear, of pebbles rocked back and forth again and again by long, smooth waves; waves stained red with blood of counted soldiers laying on their mouths in shallow water.

  
_You don't always get what you wish for but, sometimes, you get lucky._

  
He stood up, grabbed her by her wrists and dragged her over to the oil drums. There he leaned her up against the stained drums into a sitting position and crouched down at her feet. The flock of starlings landed on the grass, quivering with a shock of anticipation before shooting back up into the sky. He lifted her head up and moved it backwards until it rested against an edge of an oil drum.

  
_My turn._


	8. The Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had it commin'. They did this to me, and this I what I do. This is who I am. Somebody deserved it. Somebody deserves to die.

* * *

  
_She took his hand and placed her palm against his by sliding her hand upward from his wrist, across his palm, matching her fingers for each of his._

  
_“Your life is in you hands, you know.”_

  
_“Literally, you mean?”_

  
_She laughed as he had meant for her to laugh._

  
_“Your life is in the actions carried out by your hands,” she explained and pressed his palm against her cheek. He stroked her lower lip with his thumb._

  
_“So my actions define me.”_

  
_“I suppose so. Yes.”_

  
_He smiled wickedly._

  
_“They say you can tell a lot about a fellow by the look of his hands,” he said._

  
_She pulled back and looked at his palm. He pulled her closer and kissed her on the hollow just above her collarbone. She complied with a scent._

  
_Later, when she was gone and he was laying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, he lifted his hands and held them above his face. He had large hands, strong and heavy, but the skin on his palms was unblemished and soft._

  
_He closed his fingers into fists, clenched them tightly and counted his knuckles and the valleys between them. He flexed his wrists, and the claws moved under the skin like rigid snakes under a blanket of flesh._

  
My life is in my hands.

  
_He let the claws move back and unmade the fists, slowly, turning his hands around as his fingers unfolded. He studied the lines that run across his palms and mapped out the patterns that the lines drew on his skin._

  
Life simply passes through me and leaves no signs on the surface.

  
_He ran his hands across his face to prove them real._

  
But it's all in me, unseen, in hidin’.

  
It'll all come out some day.

  
You'll see.

  
* * *  
  
There seemed to be no limit to his patience. He found the paradox strangely amusing. Getting angry or being pissed off by something happened in an instance, daily. Sometimes it was a constant state of mind for days, and he would flee the society into solitude in wilderness. After a week or so of hunting and walking the tempest would pass and he would head back to people even though he couldn't understand why he returned.  
  
He knew he was an island and not a part of any known continent.  
  
It had been hunting that had led to the discovery on patience. He could stalk for hours, days if necessary. Sometimes he followed a deer or a moose or even a pack of wolves just for the fun of it, just because he could. He could wait seemingly endlessly for the right opportunity, not for just any opportunity, but for the right one, the one that actually would deliver. He assumed that was why he practically never failed.

  
Grace came around just after the sunset. He had kept an ear on her heartbeat and breathing and had noticed a change an hour before. He had been laying on the grass until then, counting the clouds, following their constant metamorphosis and wondering how immensely unfair it was that you couldn't walk on them. (He had felt slightly embarrassed when he had caught himself thinking that.) The change had brought him back and he had again crouched down at her feet. After that he had been thinking about hunting and game and how similar stalking game was to stalking people; there was the same satisfaction in them both. He knew normal folks would find his thoughts disturbing. Or disturbed. He wondered why he didn't.

  
She woke up slowly. He kept book of the signs as they appeared playing a game of anticipation against himself to see if he could guess what would happen next. He played this game often while watching people, and he assumed there was a link between it and hunting. This was different though, a new level.

  
Her left hand slid down over the side of her thigh and fell softly to the grass, drawing aside the thick cotton shirt from which the bottom-most button was missing. It revealed the waistband of her trousers and a small patch of bare skin.

  
“Jesus Christ, Logan,” she said unexpectedly. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  
He looked up at her and saw a sly smile on her face. He didn't answer. She shifted, pushed herself up to fit more comfortably against the oil-drums. He turned his head away to count the distance to his truck. At the corner of his eye he saw her look up at the clear deep blue sky shaded in a deep pink-orange hue. He smelled weakness and allowed himself a satisfied smile before turning back to her. She pushed herself further up into a higher sitting position. He stared at her legs as they tiredly dragged away from him. A tide of hatred rose in his spine.

  
_All I wanted was to get away._

  
“Logan?”

  
He lifted his head up sideways and rolled neck and shoulders to relieve the pain that had taken to inhabit the muscles between his shoulder plates. The tension gave away with a soft snap, and the rejuvenated blood flow warmed his neck. The scar from her blade pulsated as the blood rushed past it. He looked at her.

  
“You just take it easy, darlin’.”

  
She threw a quick glance up at the sky and pulled down the hem of her shirt. Her hand was pale and her fingers trembled just enough for him to take notice.

  
“I should get inside, Logan. I ain't feeling too good, you know.”

  
He looked her in the eye and smiled openly. She wiped her brow with her palm and rubbed the hand dry against her thigh.

  
“Can't you heal yourself?”

  
She took a look at the sky again. “Your adamantium fucked up my system. I need to get inside.”

  
The rage flared somewhere and he fought it. He didn't want to lose it. Not quite yet. Her whole body shivered now. He sensed adrenaline.

  
She pulled her legs in. “You're right. I'm sorry. It's not your adamantium.”

  
He looked at his hands and flexed his fingers savouring the feeling of strength in them.

  
“Speaking of which,” he said, “You never finished your story about the sword.”

  
“I can't tell it now. I need to get inside. I need to eat.” There was a tinge of despondency in her voice. He more felt than heard it, but it was there and he liked the taste of it.

  
“No. I want you to tell me about it now.” He moved closer to haunch down by her hips. He placed his ankle between her thighs. “What's the rush, darlin'? The night is young.”

  
She looked at his eyes but then avoided them trying to peer past him at the darkening sky. He smiled again. He was winning, he knew it: the stench of fear was unmistakable now. He took hold of her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. She tried to resist, but it was so easy to hold her still. He gently brushed her hair back with his left hand.

  
“Know what, Grace. I almost did trust you back then at the cabin. Almost.” Her skin was cold and sweaty. “I told you all I could remember.” He kept brushing her hair, observing the flow of dark tresses through his fingers. He twisted one long lock around his index finger and leaned in to catch her scent.

  
“I think it's only fair, that you return the favour, darlin’."

  
She reached for his right wrist. “I can't now, please. I'll tell you later, once I get somewhere warm, but not now.” Her pupils were wide and he could hear her heart beating hastily. She was afraid. She was afraid of him. He laughed.

  
“You did tell somebody, didn't you? It was you all along,” he hissed at her face as he squeezed her chin. “Those soldiers I saw when you thought that I had left. You called them. They came for me.” The rage was boiling under his skin like oil, black and heated. He changed his hand to grip her throat, and she coughed.

  
“Yes, I called…"

  
He let go of her and stood up. The sky was almost black and full of cold diamond-stars, and he felt their cold light on his face. He looked down at her again. She was looking up too. She seemed frozen, but her hands and legs shook with minor convulsions and her breathing was shallow. The steel on his bones was bitterly cold.

  
_They made me into what I am now._

  
_They did this to me_.

  
He opened his palms and looked at them.

  
_They owe me._

  
_Somebody deserves to die for the pain they put in me._

  
“I see,” he said though part of him was still unsure, “and you really thought that you could get away with it.”

  
_She deserves it._

  
His palms were sweating.

  
_They did this to me._

  
He kicked her in the ribs. Air exploded from her lungs and she curled up, gasping. He grabbed her by the waist of her trousers and pulled her down to lie on the grass. She shielded her head with her arms, but didn't fight back.

  
_She deserves it._

  
_She had it comin'._

  
He turned her around onto her back and sat astride on her hips. She tried to curl up and cover her stomach, but he pushed her shoulders back against the ground. He tasted the fear running in her and he let the claws out. This time he didn't mind the pain. There was a new kind of ecstasy in the sensation of adamantium cutting his own flesh.

  
He pulled her up and held the claws at her face.

  
“You did this to me.”

  
She wasn't looking at the claws but at him.

  
“You did this to me,” he said and shoved her back down. Her face was ashen and she stank of fear, but her eyes were glued to him. He withdrew the right-hand claws and hit her hard on the side of her head with his fist.

  
“Fuck the sword,” he said watching her under him. She had shielded her head with her forearms. She was bleeding; he smelled the blood. The rage in him lunged forward, and he let it come. She was afraid of him. He knew there was a grin on his face.

  
“I know it was you.”

  
He wouldn't have bothered to listen even if she had responded. He forced her arms open, but she closed her eyes instantly and tried to turn her head away from him.

  
“Maybe it wasn't you personally, but I don't give a shit. Makes no difference to me.”

  
A part of him was listening from the distance. The rest of him captured both of her wrists in his left hand and caressed her face with his right one. He let the claws out again and the stars reflected on their surface.

  
He pulled her up against him and pressed his cheek and sideburn against her jaw-line. He inhaled her scent and circled her earlobe with the tip of his nose.

  
“Last November I remembered,” he breathed into to her ear, “on a Sunday night. I'd been drinkin' heavily.” He snickered. “But since, you know, I can't get drunk so that might be a bit of an understatement. But I remembered.

  
“I was submerged into a glass tank, strapped down to the bottom, and it was filled with this strange fluid, not water, but somethin' thicker, green.” He laid her gently down. “First I thought I was drownin' but the liquid was breathable so I breathed, again and again. It was so fuckin' hard I had to concentrate on it.” The night had turned the air cold, and he inhaled deeply to wash away the memory of the liquid from his lungs. A set of short convulsion shook her body. He looked down.

  
“They used blue lasers to cut me through the liquid.” The old pain was still there in his body. “They had to cut me again and again 'cause I healed too fast. I felt my flesh burn and heal, but I couldn't see 'cause the blood stained the liquid and turned it brown.

  
“But they replaced it, several times. I suppose they couldn't see either.”

  
Suddenly he was grateful for the warmth of her body under him; he felt less helpless. He closed his eyes, but the memories of a lived nightmare welcomed him.

  
“I passed out at some point, but it wasn't a blessin'.

  
“There were tubes comin' out of my chest when I came around again. Or goin' in I suppose. All these IVs and steel-coloured tubes, that burned like hell.” He burst into a hysteric laughter. “It was hell. I guess it makes in only appropriate.”

  
She convulsed, and he held her hands against the ground and waited for the episode to pass. She relaxed after a while and looked again at him.

  
“You have no idea,” he said when her eyes were clear again. “You have no idea how it felt, when they injected the adamantium. No idea whatsoever.” Rising panic made his muscles tremble, and the rage fell back for a moment, but only to regroup and advance again in a tight, unforgiving formation.

  
“It burned my bones away, but they healed. They grew back.

  
“I healed.

  
“I was chosen 'cause I healed.”

  
There were tears running from her eyes. There was distant part of him who knew she was crying because of him.

  
“You can heal yourself too.”

  
There were eight buttons on her shirt. He sliced the garment open with an attentive cut.

  
“It's all written on you, you see. All the damage and all the healin'. Every single cut, and I can read it, Grace. I can read you.”

  
The scars were beautiful. Neat white lines on her lightly tanned skin arranged into patterns, intersecting, dividing, presenting stories for him to read. All there plain at his sight. All contrary to his own skin, which, like his mind, was void of any memory.

  
Except for the adamantium on his bones and the ambiguously lucid dreams when he tried to sleep.

  
“I have a past, you know.” He was angry beyond all reason. Mad. He didn't mind, but welcomed the feeling. “I have a history. I did come from somewhere.”

  
He drew a thin red line on her skin with one of his claws, traced out the pattern of the scars. The scent of blood was intoxicating, and a shiver of fulfilment danced on his skin. He smiled.

  
“Unlike you, I was perfect.” He spread his arms wide open over her. “I was perfect. I could take it. I was the only one who could take it.” She struggled under him, tried to push herself free, but her hands only rent small pieces of turf off the ground. To him her movements seemed unreal.

  
“I heal perfectly. You scar.” He covered her abdomen with his palms. The blood on her was warm, and he gently massaged her sides and stomach. “All these scars. Your whole fuckin' life written all over you.” His fingers found an old long slash mark on her side. He reopened it with his claw.

  
“Like this one.” Fresh hot blood poured on his fingers. “A wound from a sword. A lightweight-one. Maybe a rapier or a cutlass?” He tutted. “You must have seen it comin'. Why didn't you parry it?”

  
She said something, but he couldn't make out the words.

  
“Now, this one here. It must have been a riffle.” He cut a circle around it. “Heavy calibre. You're lucky it didn't tear you apart, darlin’."

  
The fresh blood from the wounds covered her skin and he tried to wipe it away with both of his hands. He wanted to see the scars that he could never have, but was only able to feel them through the oily liquid of her body. He made one more effort and then raised his hand to watch in fascination how the blood lost its warmth into the night. His hand steamed and on a whim he licked her blood off his palm.

  
The blood was flavoured with adrenaline: a bittersweet tang behind the saltines and iron. He wiped his hand on her shoulder where the shirt was still dry. Her eyes were open. She tried to speak, but there was no sound. She swallowed and looked at him again.

  
“Please, you…"

  
He smiled. There was only fear to be found in her eyes. A thin layer of fear, panic and desperation on the surface and nothing beneath it. The whole deepness of confidence, courage and arrogance was gone.

  
_She's afraid of me._

  
He cut and tore a piece of her left sleeve off and rubbed off most of the blood on her diaphragm. The bleeding had slowed down and he managed to uncover the row of three puncture marks that he had been looking for. He threw the rag away.

  
He matched the tips of his right-hand claws on the scars applying pressure gently so that the skin yielded but did not brake.

  
“Your skin is beautiful,” he said. “Mine is flawless.”

  
He pushed the claws in, and the skin broke, parted on both sides of each of his claws. The blades conducted the warmth of her body into his fist, and he felt the smoothness of her inner organs against the metal. He growled and shivered with pleasure.

  
She screamed when he was two thirds of the way through. It startled him and he jammed his fist down. That nailed her to the ground, and he sat there, disoriented, staring at her screaming face, panting. Somehow he didn't quite get it.  
  
Her eyes stared at the sky. She was squealing now, throwing her head from side to side, but eyes still locked to the stars. The full-blown panic reeked out of her like pus from an infected wound and its stench made him fall back. He covered his mouth and nose with his hand as he scrambled to his feet, but his hand was covered in her blood. That brought the stench into his throat. He retched and then threw up.

  
He washed his hands and face with water from a puddle in an old truck-track. The water was cold and it left his hands somewhat muddy, but it washed the blood away. He wiped his face dry on his forearms. The dropping temperature had summoned a thin mist from the ground and the moisture dampened the world on scent. He shook his mane and shoulders and went back to her.

  
She had curled up into a foetal position before she had passed out.

  
_She had it commin_'.

  
She wasn't bleeding anymore. The scent of fresh blood was gone, but the smell of fear still remained. He snarled at it as he knelt down.

  
She seemed so useless now in his eyes. A pile of flesh and bones and torn, bloody clothes.

  
_I could've killed her in her sleep six years ago._

  
_I should've killed her at the yard._

  
He leaned his elbow on his knee and his cheek on his palm. The rage had ebbed along with the scent of blood.

  
_Third's the charm._

  
He shoved her over to her back. Some of the wounds reopened, and the fresh blood made his hesitate. It was all too familiar somehow; the wounds, the helplessness, the uselessness, the state of surrender. He felt suddenly ill at ease.

  
_She's all I have._

  
Something turned in his stomach and he felt fear.

  
_She's my only lead. If she dies, I'm left with nothin'._

  
Her pulse was weak. There was too much blood on the grass, and he knew she was in shock.

  
_She had it commin'._

  
_They did this to me, and this I what I do._

  
_This is who I am._

  
_Somebody deserved it._

  
_Somebody deserves to die._

  
Her heart added a fluttering set of extra beats to her pulse, and she convulsed. He panicked, sat astride over her and tried to hold her still. Her spine arched under him, and he feared she would choke, but then her muscles unclenched, and her heart moved into a steady stronger beat. He listened to it for a while and tried to soothe himself by gently rubbing the remains of the seizure away from her arms and shoulders. The tension was gone, but she was cold. He pushed her hair away from her face.

  
_Somebody deserves it._

  
_Please, don't let it be her._

  
It was cold, he realised. He got up and walked to his truck forcing himself to keep a casual, even pace. He took the felt blanket from behind the backrest and began to spread it open over the passenger's seat but then changed his mind. He took the blanket to her instead, laid it open next to her on the grass and carefully lifted her onto it. He folded the fabric meticulously around her making sure he left no part of her uncovered. He then lifted her up, carried her to the car and managed to get her resting on the seat without undue discomfort. She was tall for a woman, and there wasn't too much space left for him even after he bent her legs close to her torso. He pushed the door close and sat behind the wheel.

  
It was annoyingly tight to sit between the door and the crown of her head so he lifted her head to rest it on his thigh. He started the engine, put on the lights and drove slowly out to the road avoiding the heaviest bumps on the way. Her body moved along with the movements of the car and her head swayed in his lap.

  
It felt uncomfortable at first, to have a woman's head in his lap. He wanted to move her, but there was no room to spare. He kept his back rigidly upright instead, but after a while he noticed he had forgotten to avoid her.

  
He lifted her head a little closer to him.

  
_Somebody deserves it, but it won't be her_.  



	9. Surface Boundary Layer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It won't feel the same anyhow. It never does.
> 
> All things change.

_I'm not drifting, but neither I am a fixed point in the blackness. Things are moving away from me, gaining distance, becoming increasingly obscure, but I don't care. It makes no difference. There's no reason to be bothered._

_This is easier._

_This requires no effort._

_But I don't let go. I just stay._

_There's someone in the darkness picking up my body and carrying it away, and after a while I follow._

_The Carrier is tall and lean, long-limbed, clad in dusty blue. A man, maybe, but the face is featureless._

_He carries my body back into the mist-filled forest of young aspens. It is warm there; he brings me back. I follow._

_ * * *_

  
It hurts. It all hurts. It hurt when I passed out and it's pain that wakes me up.

I can't breathe. It hurts too much. The pain is in my lungs and in my bones, and I can't breathe. It hurts. I hear myself whimper under my breath.

Someone lifts my head up. I hear words, but they make no sense. Just a voice. A deep one. A quiet one. There's liquid in my mouth. He wants me to drink. It's thick and warm and it takes a long time to finish it up.

He speaks to me again.

I pass out.

This time the darkness is peaceful.

* * *

  
She wasn't there when he returned with the Italian take-out, he knew it the moment he unlocked and opened the door. He stood there for a moment, one hand on the doorknob, food bags seized in the other. He wanted to slam the door, but just closed it casually instead. He would not draw any attention to himself and consequently compromise the location, the same reason for which he had declined the free delivery. He took the food to the kitchenette at the back of the motel room and unloaded the cardboard boxes from the bags onto the countertop. The food was still warm, and he decided he might just as well eat it. No point in passing up a resource to which you might not return. There was a fork in the sink and he picked it up.

She had been unconscious for three, almost four full days. He should have got some food then while she was still knocked out, but he had felt unwilling to leave her all by herself back then. Her condition had been too unstable for the first 24 hours. There had been a point during the first night when he had seriously considered taking her to a hospital. She had been dangerously hypothermic, shaking and breathing with shallow whispers, but eventually he hadn't dared to. There was no solid explanation he could have given when asked what had happened, and even the most dimwitted ER-nurse in the history of medical care would have seen that she had been washed and cared for before arriving to the hospital. So instead he had stripped her and himself naked and slept with her through that night, covering her cold flesh with his own warm one and willing the warmth back into her body. By the morning she had been warm again, and he had got up and dressed her again.

Maybe she had called for someone to pick her up. There was a phone on the night table and he hadn't thought to disable it. He opened a box of cannelloni and began to eat. The cheese was still scalding and he carefully blew on every fork-full before letting it past his lips. He kept thinking about the phone. An hour wasn't really enough time to arrange and execute a pick-up. Unless you had a big enough organisation.

_For fuck's sake, Logan._

He rubbed his brow with his right-hand knuckles and continued eating.

_That's paranoia. I ain't goin' down that road again_.

He put the food down and took a can of beer from the bag. He snapped it open and took a long swing from it. It was lukewarm and not his preferred brand, but he tried to agree to its taste. He sloshed the liquid around in his mouth, swallowed and made a face. Abruptly the frustration he had tried to avoid boiled over, and he threw the half-full beer can across the room hitting the door bang on target. He cursed to his heart's content, but held in check the urge to scream in rage. He wasn't about to go down that road either.

Never again, if he had any say in it.

_Fat chance._

He picked up the food again.

So. Grace had to be close by. She didn't have any clothes left, so she could't be far. Both his and Grace’s clothing had been soaked in blood and mud, and by the time they had reached the motel the blood had clotted and the mud had dried. He had had to wash her: the stench of blood, death and fear had been overpowering and it had made him gag when he had cut her clothes off to undress her. He had had to cut off his own clothes too. The jeans had been past redeeming anyhow, but the shirts might have made it if only he had dared to pull them past his face. He had been running on the edge. The adrenaline and the primal fight-reaction had still made his hands tremble and he had not been sure if he could have stayed in control if the scent of blood had got to his face. So he had cut his shirts open and had wrapped all the garments in three garbage bags to seal off the smell until he could dispose them.

He rubbed his nose. A mild scent of roses and brown sugar hovered on his the skin of his hand, and he liked it. It felt homely.

It had been difficult to wash an unconscious person and in the end he had had to get into the bathtub with her. He had sat behind her, with her between his thighs to keep her from sliding down. He had scrubbed her down with the motel's rose-scented soap and water almost hot enough to burn. The filth had turned the water brown, then deep red, and he had thrown up once because of the smell. The sight and scent of blood had made his spine hurt, had made him snarl inadvertently and he had sniffed her bare neck and hairline, growling, before he had been able to stop himself. After that he had concentrated on the dusty scent of the rosy soap, and it had helped.

There was only tomato sauce and white slivers of melted cheese left in the box and he threw it into the bin.

_She won't be far._

That thought made it easier to function. He took the rag he had used to dry her forehead and chest during the second night when her temperature had run high, and he went to clean up the beer stains along the can's flight path. The outburst felt embarrassing now. There was a dent in the door but not big enough to be too obvious he thought. He took the can, poured the remaining beer away and rinsed the cloth. He liked for the things to be shipshape. It gave him a chance to have control over something, over anything.

He folded the rag and hung it over the tab. He put the rest of the beer and soda cans into the fridge and realised that he hadn't turned on the lights only then as the fridge's light fell on the floor. He sighed and looked out. It was already dark and the stars were out. The sky had that cold, crispy clearness of a way-below-freezing winter night to it, and he knew it wouldn't be long before the first frost. He leaned over the counter to get a better look through the kitchenette's window. He could make out the Cassiopeia's tilted W, but the North Star to which one of the arms pointed was blinded by the eaves.

He sighed again. He had learnt that he knew quite a bit about the night sky. Why, he couldn't imagine, but he had lost the interest in letting it bother him. In a way it was reassuring to be familiar with that vastness, to know there was something he could name and organise where ever he went. He had been to Australia two years back and he had known the stars of the southern hemisphere too. In the sky he had a map compared to which all his innate mysteries seemed trivial. What ever had happened to him, that had had no effect to the stars.

It had been a clear, starry night the night he had taken down Grace.

He pulled back from the window as the uneasiness returned to his body. He knew he had missed something, something elementary, some vital clue. He stared at his hands, their dark form against the pale counter top. The starlight had glinted on his claws and when he had crouched over close to her face he had seen cold, hard stars reflected in her eyes. Her pupils had been wide, dilated to the maximum, and filled with sky as she stared past his distorted face. He remembered how she had tried to cover her face, and how he had forced her to look. But the funny thing was, after that she had kept her eyes nailed to his, pleading with him, but not to beg him stop. He rubbed his eye with the heel of his left hand. She hadn't begged him to stop.

What had she begged for? She had tried to say something, but he hadn't paid attention and why would he had? It wasn't like she could have said anything to make him stop.

_She was askin’ for help._

He stood up abruptly and stuffed his hands into his pockets defensively.

_She wasn't lookin' at me when she screamed. She was lookin' at the sky._

He leaned over the counter again and peered at the sky. There was nothing there, only the stars.

_No way. It fuckin' can't be that._

He laughed aloud and straightened himself, grinning.

_Stars. That fuckin' –. He rubbed his eye again. Oh, hell. Siderophobia. She's afraid of the stars._

_(How the fuck do I know what it’s called?)_

Logan went out to find her. She had to be close by and he had to find her. The whole idea of being afraid of stars was so inconceivable that he wanted to ask her about it right away. How could you be afraid of stars when there was a man sitting on you chest and cutting your skin away with six inch blades?

* * *

  


He found her sitting by the pool with her feet dangling in the water. Only the underwater lights were turned on, and the inner yard of the motel was washed with dancing blue shadows. He crossed the yard quietly but with a certain purpose in his step. She didn't seem to notice his approach until he stood by her side.

“Hello, Logan,” she said somnolently, as if half drowned in the shimmering of light on water. He grunted wordlessly. She chuckled but offered nothing more. He studied her features with sidelong glances. She was wearing one of his spare T-shirts, a white one, and his spare jeans, and they both were far too large for her; she had rolled the trouser legs up over her knees. The shirt hung loosely on her, and he could see her shoulder through the collar. She smelled of whisky.

Logan chose to remained standing.

“I have food inside if you want to eat.” He tried to keep the bite out of his voice, but there was something acutely irritating in her air. He took a look around and counted the lit windows of the motel. It was end-season now and a Sunday night, and only a handful of rooms had quests. Mostly business-sort of people he assumed; most of the cars upfront were dark or silver-grey corporate sedans.

“Do you want to eat?” he asked again when she hadn't answered. “Grace?”

She startled slightly, looked around and then up to him. “Oh, what? No, I don't feel like eating just know, but – hey, thanks anyhow.” She smiled looking at him before turning away again. “Maybe later,” she added and took a sip of whisky from the bottle.

Logan sat down on the tiles few feet away from her and studied her neck.

“You found my whisky.”

“Aye.” She lifted the bottle up and studied its label. “Good brand this one. Irish but okay.” She twisted her torso to offer the bottle to him. He shook his head, and she turned away yet again. “I would have chosen something with a more peat in it, but this one's alright too.” She took another sip and laid the bottle down.

The casual lack of concern about her suddenly got to him. She had been like that ever since she had woken up. As though there was nothing wrong with him; as though nothing had happened. He had had it and he would not put up with that any longer.

“I don't trust you, Grace,” he blurted in low voice, “I don't know who you are or who you represent, but –.” He jumped up and paced back and forth behind her back puffing with anger, trying to whip it into submission. She remained motionless and he sat down on his haunches right by her left shoulder and tried to keep his voice level.

“I've spent last four days tryin' to figure out why it seems more useful to keep you alive, but I don't know,” he said clutching his teeth together. “I don't know. Who are you? Really. Why are you afraid of the stars, but not of me cuttin' my way through you?” He leaned in closer and growled into her ear: “Why, Grace? What the fuck is goin’ on? Who the fuck are you?”

"I don't know either," she said quietly. Light reflected from the water illuminated her face with a dancing veil. "I honestly don't know. I think I lost myself along the way, a long time ago. I can’t remember who I used to be.” She paused for a moment. “I don’t know about you either. It's a gut feeling telling me I don't need to worry about you. But why, I don't know why."

He seized her jaw and turned her head to face him. “I beat the shit out of you, almost cut you to pieces, Grace,” he said mustering all the menace hidden within him. She twisted her head free.

“Aye, you did.” She smiled briefly and reached for the bottle. “Makes no sense, I know. But there's nothing much that makes sense these days, is there.” She drank slowly and deep, then wiped her mouth with her palm.

_My gut feelin' is tellin’ me to keep you alive._

He grunted feeling frustrated.

_Why does it always has to go the hard way?_

“Grace, I need you to chop my head off one day, so I have to keep you around till that.” He sat down properly leaving his knees up and his arms resting on them. “But I don't know. Trustin' you seems a fuckin’ long leap of faith to me.” He paused and studied her features, who her hair fell down along the side of her head, how her jaw connected with her skull and how her throat with her chest. “I had never heard of adamantium before,” he continued as he watched her turn her head to look at him, “but you knew it right away, and that makes me to think. You took those soldiers out like a pro and called a one helluva clean up crew to clear up the mess. Makes me think even more. Who the hell are you really?”

She looked past him, sighed, glanced at him and smiled resignedly. “I go by the name of Grace Blair and I work for a counter-terrorism agency. Other than that – I'm sorry, Logan.” She turned away again.

“That fella, that Nick somethin', he's one of you too?”

“Aye, he is.”

“Right,” he said to the back of her head. Her hair was combed back and along her scull, slightly oily, but dark, dark like an otter's coat.

It all felt strange: to be sitting here with the woman who he had been sure was somehow connected and thus in his eyes was partly to blame for all the grief in his life. A convenient scapegoat to be slaughtered for the crimes of others.

_I wanted for her to be the scapegoat._

He wasn't after a revenge. He wanted something more. He wanted for someone to feel all the pain and torture, all the fear and desolation that turned into the bottomless desperation he felt at times; to feel all that shit that was all he remembered. It wasn't justice he was after (he wanted justice, but he didn't believe in it) and it wasn't retribution either. He wanted to pass on the suffering, he wanted to give it to someone else, and maybe then he wouldn't have to live with it anymore.

Grace drank again from the bottle; he realised a good third of the whisky was already gone.

_She already knows pain_, he thought as he watched her place the bottle down with abundant care. _She knows pain and it wouldn't make much of a difference if mine was added to hers._

The one to receive his pain would be someone feeling perfectly safe and sound. Someone who would have caused others to suffer, but who would think himself to be perfectly safe. Not her, but someone with something to loose. Someone with everything to loose.

He inhaled slowly and deep through his nose and snarled slightly at the scent of her. It was easy to discard the scents of whisky, but the smell of chlorine from the pool was distracting with its throat-entangling thickness. He sneezed and was forced to repeat the process. There was no smell of lie on her, only sadness and dusty roses.

Grace swirled around, and the sudden movement made him shy. He frowned angrily at her, but she either didn't notice or just didn't care. She pointed a finger at him.

“I think I should know you from somewhere, you know, Logan,” she said squinting her eyes. “I'm sure I have met you before.”

His hackles stood up.

“You seem familiar somehow, you know.” She tilted her head and measured him with her eyes. “I don't recall ever seeing you face, but that,” she chuckled, "that doesn't mean a shite. I don’t remember faces anyhow, but I do remember how people are. I remember how people move.” She paused, lifted her chin up and bit the corner of her lower lip. “Aye, I think I do remember you. I remember you moving. Nick was right.” Her eyes lit up and she smiled with genuine delight. “We did meet in Nam. I remember you now. You still walk the same way.”

Logan felt frozen. “How do you mean we met in Nam?”

She pulled her left leg from the water and turned halfway around to face him. “Aye, in '64, or maybe '65. I get those mixed up every time, but it was just before the good old US got properly mixed into that mess anyhow. We pulled you lads out of the jungle, don't you remember?”

Cold fire burned in his spine. “No, I guess I don’t."

She looked confused for a second, then embarrassed or sad. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t." She turned away again.

“Aren’t you a bit too young for Nam?”

“Oh, Logan,” she said and flashed an innocent smile at him, “you’re not the only one with longer years than you care to remember.”

Logan moved in closer to her. He run his eyes along the line of her neck and the collar of the shirt. Her skin was lightly tanned, smooth and easily penetrable. He looked down at his arms. He could almost see the blue flames running along them; the frustration was dangerously close to turning into anger. He had to find out, to know. _Now._

“I was in Nam?” he whispered as he placed his hand on her neck and stroked the side of her spine with his thumb. “What was I doin' in Nam?”

“Standard pre-assault recon, mostly. And you were clearing the way. You know what means. The jungle was thick with black ops back then.”

He pulled his hand way. “And you were there too.”

“Aye. Something went south and we were called in to retrieve you.”

He frowned. The world around him seemed surreal and distant. His mind was reaching for memories that were no longer there. He wanted to remember, to fill the blurry void that kept him from truly connecting with the present.

“Who was I?” His own voice seemed to have an echo to it.

“Oh, I don't remember you name either.” She threw a sidelong glance at him. “Another thing I'm not so good at keeping track.” She leaned forward with her hands by her knees on the pool's edge. She looked up to the sky. “You were one of a special black ops team. Your job was to purge key locations of Chinese and Vietcong spies and combatants. Standard, like I said, but somehow things got out of hand.”

“How?” His throat was dry.

“You made more of a mess than you were supposed to make.” She picked up the bottle, but didn't take a drink. “You killed people you weren't supposed to kill.”

“Who?”

She took the drink then. He stared at her ear.

“Logan, it was a long time ago. Let it rest. All wars have their demons.” She sounded tired and annoyed.

“Who did we kill?”

She whispered a groan. “They said the collateral damage was too high, and you know perfectly well what that means.” She sighed again. “You should be grateful that you don't remember.”

He knew what she meant; he had seen a documentary some months ago.

The feeling of segregation was suffocating. He felt like he wasn’t off this world but off some other, from some alternate timeline and thrown into this one where he had no business being.

“I need a drink.”

She passed the bottle to him and he drank eagerly. The cask strength malt burnt his throat and his nose making his eyes water. The burning run down his gullet and along the lining of his stomach, and he could map out its shape and location by the spreading burning. The pain gave him a connection to the reality.

“Did I have,” he coughed, “did I have the claws back then?”

“I don't know. I really don't remember details like that. You might have had. They are a pretty standard augmentation.” She dipped her hand into the pool and poured the water slowly from the cup of her hand. He watched the droplets run down her fingers and off her finger tips. _Standard augmentation_. “But,” she continued and dried her hand on the T-shirt, “I don't think your claws are something you would have boasted about. So maybe you had them. Maybe you didn’t.” She lost herself into a private world of her own, and he let her go.

_Maybe it ain't that bad that I don't remember shit like that._

He watched her dabble her feet in the pool. She smiled vaguely at the pattern of waves she created. His neck itched.

_This is gettin' way too complicated._

He lied down on his back and let his hands rest palms down on his belly. The shady blue buildings of the motel encircled the field of his vision and the dark sky opened straight above him. There was a vaguely chilly breeze drawing moisture from the water, and he felt the humidity on the hairs of his forearms. The tiles under him were still warm from the sun. He searched for the North Star and imagined the skies turning around it.

_I'm caught in this strange, perverted dance with her_, he thought.

A satellite caught his eye and he followed its journey across the heavens with his eyes.

_A fuckin’ carousel. _

The satellite reached the zenith and he turned his eyes to her. She too was staring at the sky.

_There's no goin' back anymore. There never was._

He sat up and pulled his knees up and closer to him. “The other night, you know, Grace, that shouldn't have happened.” There was no excusing for what he was, he accepted that. “I lost control. It won't happen again.” _Sure thing, buddy. Let’s see how long that will last._

She was quiet for a long while, but he saw something change in her.

“This world is making me hollow, Logan. It's eating me up, from the inside.” She laughed with dark barks, grew then sombre again and took another swing from the whisky. He envied her ability to get drunk.

“No, that's not right exactly. This world is fine, brilliant, my friend. And I should know, I've seen hundreds.” She tilted her head back and stared at the night sky with mouth open and pose sluggish from the alcohol. “Fucking light pollution, you can't even see the bloody stars from it.”

“I thought you were afraid of the stars.”

She laughed again and looked at him. “So you figured that out.” She looked at the sky again. “ But it’s not the stars. It's the distance.”

“The distance to what? The stars?”

She turned her head lazily around and gazed at him with drunken haziness. He got the feeling that she was about to mock him.

“What are you really afraid of, Wolverine? The past catching up with you?” She drank from the bottle while her eyes remained fixed on his. “The past not catching up with you?”

“Don't fuck with me, darlin’”

“Not about to, Wolverine. Not about to.”

She pulled her legs from the pool and pushed herself closer to him leaving wet stains on the reddish-brown tiles. She put her hand inside his T-shirt, through the neck, and her fingers felt dry and warm against his skin. She moved her hand over his collarbone, down towards the armpit, fingers fiddling gently, looking for something.  
The chain was in there, cold and steel-dark, and she pulled the dog tag out. She turned it over in her hand, under the half light of the pool side and studied it with her fingers. She found something, laid down the whisky and pried the chain over his head with both hands. The chain got entangled with his hair, but she was gentle and pulled the hair free one lock at a time. She turned away and held the tag up against a light so that he could see what she saw.

“The notch,” she said softly, with remembrance. She tilted her head to the right and smiled. “Can you remember the story about the notch, Logan?”

“No.”

_There's no memory in me. Not of the notch. Nor of you._

“People used to say that you were supposed to put the tag between the teeth of a fallen soldier and then give a good kick on the jaw, so that the tag would be buried into the skull. That way the identity would stay with the corpse. Supposedly the notch is there to hold the tag in place while you kick.” She opened her mouth and put the dog tag between her teeth to see if would fit. It didn’t, and she snickered. “People will believe anything if it's just dumb enough. What would you do if your dead buddy didn't have a head anymore, eh?”

Logan took the chain from her and slipped it over his head. She looked at him with narrow eyes contemplating something. A young couple came to the pool, undressed and dived in. Waves traveled across the pool and broke against the sides.

“We don't fear death, Logan, you and I.”

He watched the water for a while and the replied: “No.”

“It's the loss of self that scares us witless, right?”

_Yes._ “Guess so.”

She remained motionless, and he thought of empty eggshells laying on the ground, hollow, eaten. He had eaten seagull eggs once, somewhere. The taste was all he remembered.

“I'm so far from home, you know.”

“I think we both are.”

She looked around at him, sharply, before returning into staring at the darkness.

“Have you ever surrendered, Logan?” she said and let herself fall softly against the tiles.

“No.” _Yes._

“You're lying. You have. Once.” She rolled over to her side and lay there with one arm stretched straight and her head resting on it; the other was one bent, with hand under her cheek. “That's okay, Logan, don't worry about it. I think once is enough. I don't think you can surrender more than once in your life. After that it's just a one more way to react among all the other possible reactions. Once is enough. After that you know you're not any different from the rest of the mankind. Womankind. Humanity. Or what ever.”

“Grace, you're full of shit.”

She turned onto her back and laughed. “I am, aren't I.”

  
* * *

  
He hadn't really slept at all when he heard her get up and walk over to him. He felt hot. The blanket was far too thick, but he liked the weight of it. The evading sleep had made him annoyed and he refused to open his eyes.

Maybe she would go away and let him be.

“I know you're awake.”

He said nothing, and she lifted the blanket and let the cool air stream over him. The feeling made him growl softly. He turned over to his back and pushed the hair away from his face. She climbed in and let the blanket fall back on both of them. He put his left hand, the hand next to her, under his head.

“What?” He just wanted to sleep. Never mind what dreams that might bring.

She reached for him, set her fingers and then her palm on his side and pushed upwards, moving her hand onto his chest and across it. Her fingers combed the hair on his muscles, but he removed himself from the feeling and took hold of her hand. There was a scent on her skin, an aroma of need that he wished would not be there.

“Grace, go back to your own bed.”

She didn't answer him, but moved to sit legs astride on his abdomen. She was naked and he felt her heat. She ran her hands over his collarbones and down his shoulders and biceps. Her eyes burned and she leaned down to kiss him. He grabbed her by her shoulders, pushed her aside and got up. He walked over to the window and set out to stare into the phoney darkness of a city night.

“Best you got to your own bed, Grace,” he said without turning to face her. He felt frustrated to no end. He crossed his arms and pressed his right forearm against the cold surface of the window. That actually did help a bit.

He waited in silence and then gave in, went back to her and sat down on the bed. He scratched the hairline on his forehead. His back was suffused with the warmth radiating from her, but the musky scent of pheromones was gone. He waited for something to happen not really knowing what to say or do.

She pushed the blanket away and sat up next to him on the bed. She tucked her hands under her thighs and stared at her knees.

“I know it would be stupid,” she said quietly. He glanced over to her. Lights of a passing car washed over her body.

_Fuck, she's all muscle. I never realised._

He turned away again. She stood up and walked past his face to get a glass of water at the kitchenette. He let his eyes follow her and watched how she emptied the glass on one go. She put the glass to the sink and paused there by the counter for a moment. Then she turned around and went right for her bed, climbed in and hid herself under the cover of her blanket. He thought he could hear her cry.

“Grace?” He couldn't believe he would get this shit from her. He got abundant amount of attention from women in bars and he turned down more offers that he accepted. Some of the rejected ones made a show of it trying to play “Oh, I'm not beautiful enough for you” crying game with him. Sometimes he played along and sometimes he even changed his mind, but she –. It was a surprise to see her use that card.

He felt he owed her, so he played along.

“Grace, it's not that I don't –.” He sighed and started again: “I could fuck you, you know, you're real good lookin' woman, but I don't want to – I just don't think it would be wise.”

He waited for a reply, but got none and he leaned back to his bed covering only his legs and hips this time. Her faint scent lingered on the cover and he didn't want to have it too close to his nose.

Maybe he would fall asleep after all.

He woke up when she sat down on his bed again. He got half up, but fell back on the pillow when he realised it was her.

“Grace, I really meant what I said. Go back to your bed.”

She had his t-shirt on again. “Couldn't I just sleep with you? I don't mean sex, but just sleep in the same bed with you.” She didn't sound pleading, but she didn't look at him either.

“Why?”

“I'm lonely, Logan. I close my eyes and all I see are shadows of people and friends long gone. I want to feel the presence of another person by me.” She lifted her feet on the bed and hugged her knees. “I'm the Last One, the one who has to stay behind until everyone else has gone. I'm the one who'll be left behind.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, but he recognised loneliness when he saw it.

“Havin' sex with me won't do you any good, you know that,” he said in a sudden burst of honesty.

_It sure as hell has never worked for me._

Grace began to stand up, but he touched her on her shoulder. “Alright, stay if you think that's what you need right now. I slept with you butt naked the first night, you were so hypothermic.” Suddenly he was acutely aware of his own bare skin and he felt an uncommon need to justify his actions. _Why the fuck I did say that_? ”Nothin’ happened. I just had to keep you warm.”

She hesitated. “Are you sure?”

Anger surfaced and he frowned. “Nothin' happened. I wouldn't fuck you just like that.”

“No, I meant if you are sure it's okay if I sleep here?”

He felt ridiculed. “Suit yourself.” He moved over to make room for her and she crawled under the blanket. He stayed on his back as Grace lay on her side facing him. After a while he felt her touch him on the shoulder.

“I knew you kept me warm the first night, I remember the warmth. Thank you.”

Logan sighed and let his body relax. “Don't worry about it. Just try to sleep.” She stroked his cheek with her fingers and turned around. He suddenly remembered the night he had spent sleeping next to her pretending to be lovers. He turned to his side and pulled her close to his chest without a hesitation. She let him do it and he felt a touch of relief in the gesture.

“You should be afraid of me, Grainne,” he whispered into her hair. “You know me for what I am. It was pure luck you didn't die on that night under the stars. I meant to kill you, you know. To have you dead under me. Nothin' would have made me happier. You shouldn't trust me like this.” He wondered why he felt the need to warn her. Her hair smelled sublime, of earth and her, and her body felt so good under his arm.

“I have no fear of you in me, remember?”

He inhaled her scent and engulfed his face into her hair. “Yeah, I remember you sayin' that, but that don't change the fact that I'm not the nicest guy in the world. You shouldn't trust me.” He felt sad when he said it, but he buried the feeling away. He was who he was.

_This is me laying next to a woman I killed twice and wanted to rape as many times. How fucked up can you get?  
_

He wondered what had stopped him. Maybe she had been right about him at some level. He listened for her to fall asleep, and when her breathing was deep and slow enough he slipped his left arm under her neck so that he could have her properly in his arms. Somehow it felt necessary to do so.

  
* * *

  
This time it was her breathing that woke him up. At some point during the night she had turned around which had brought her face close to his throat and neck. The sensation of her exhales on his skin tickled him softly and still half asleep he turned onto his back hauling her torso along with his arms. He let a waft of content escape his lungs as he began to drift back to sleep.

The weight of her on his chest and the scent and warmth of her body kept him awake. The pressure, the contact felt good. It made her seem more real, made him seem more real, and he found his hands stroking her back even though he had never meant them to. He didn't want to stop. He felt the lines of her scars under his fingers, and her skin was soft, so soft, like silken velvet or supple ivory. An arousal began to constrict his lungs. He wanted her so badly. To feel all that skin against his. To have her breathe under him. To have her push against him.

His hands began to tremble.

_No._ He suddenly saw where all this was be leading. _No way. Get a grip. No way I'm lettin' this happen. No way in hell._

He began to push her away, but she woke up and to his surprise she pulled him on top of her and between her thighs. She felt so good and warm under him, so alive, her pubic bone pressing against his erection. He wanted to move away, but dared not to. He merely stayed there eyes closed, growling under his breath, wishing he had the willpower to move away. She felt so good, so good, so good. Like heaven. Her hands found his hair, and it felt so good to have her hands and fingers in his hair pulling gently. He kissed her, bit her lower lip before suckling and nibbling the skin on her throat and shoulder.

_To hell with it._

He pushed himself up and pulled away her T-shirt (his shirt, now soaked with her scent) to discover her breasts and the muscular abdomen and the fact that she wasn't wearing the boxers. Her skin smelled intoxicating, tasted intoxicating, she tested intoxicating: a salty taste full of pheromones. She growled with pleasure.

Her voice made him hesitate.

“Grace.” She pulled him in and kissed him hungrily. “Grace, listen to me,” he said to her ear. “I can't leave you pregnant.” He lay on her trying to cover her entire skin with his. “I'm clean since, you know –,” she kissed him again, “– since I can't get sick, but I will never father a child, no child deserves a dad like me.” She wrapped her legs around him and left him breathless.

She licked his earlobe with the tip of her tongue. “Doesn't matter. We're even then, since I can't get pregnant.”

He took her word for it. He wanted her too much, and she felt so good. Warm, wet and tight around him; the muscles of her vagina moving around his cock; her hands scraping his back and pulling his buttocks closer to her. He kissed her again and buried his face into her hair.

She had her orgasm slightly before he came and she cried, silently, again. This time he ignored her, not really wanting to know why she cried. He stayed inside her holding her shoulders until he was sure all desire had left his body. She kept hugging him until he moved. He pulled out of her, got up and went to the bathroom. By the time he returned she was already asleep. He spent a moment staring at her sleeping form and deciding whether or not to return to the same bed with her. Ultimately he made up his mind and got into the other bed.

_It won't feel the same anyhow. It never does._

_All things change._


	10. The Baseline

“Hi, Nick.” I hear a coarse scraping sound as he covers the mike and shouts for the others to shut up.

“Grace, is that you?”

I can almost hear the silence surrounding him. “Aye, it’s me. I’m fine. Don’t put me on the speaker.”

“Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be in Vancouver two days ago.”

“I got delayed, but I’m fine.”

“Don’t give me that shit.” He sounds frustrated. “We tried to track your transponder when you didn’t show up, but there’s no signal.”

I cut him short. “He found it and thought it was a tumour, so he cut it out.”

“What? Who did?”

“Logan. I ran into him in that diner I went after you left. It’s a long story. I’ll tell it when I get there.” I really don’t feel up to this.

He pauses as he thinks. “Okay. We’re going to get you here ASAP. Where are you?”

“Actually I don’t know exactly. In a motel, but it has to be somewhere around Calgary.”

“Aunt Lisa sends her love.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, he’s not listening. He was gone long before I woke up this morning. I just need a lift home. I really don’t know where I am and I actually do think I’m in Calgary area. It’s not a fucking code.” I try not to raise my voice. “You’re tracking this call anyway, so just figure it out and get me home.”

“Okay. I got it.” There’s a quick pause and I hear someone whispering something. “Someone will be there in two hours.” Another pause. A longer one. “What happened, really? Are you alright? You got us worried.”

“I’m fine. I ran into him, we talked and things got messy. But it’s, like I said, a long story.” I yawn. “He saw our lads at the cabin and got into his head that we put the adamantium into him. That didn’t make him too happy.”

“He saw us.” A question disguised as a statement.

“Aye, but I don't think that matters much. His head is so fucked up that he sees conspiracies everywhere. And anyhow, there's nothing he can do about it.”

“And you don’t happen to know where he’s heading?”

“Nope. Not a clue. I don’t think he knows either.”

“Alright, he'll turn up eventually, but I really would have liked to talk with him. We have to find out how the adamantium tech got leaked.”

“Nick, we've been through this. His mind is a mess and he still doesn't remember anything. All he has are dreams and nightmares about the operation itself.”

“You know there are ways.” There’s a shadow of assertive persuasion in his voice.

“Aye, I know, and he wouldn't survive them. At least his mind wouldn't, and the Code places him under my jurisdiction.” I couldn’t hand him over even if I wanted to. There are parts of the Code that evolve and adapt to the situation, but mine is not one of them.

“There are people who think that in this case the leak is more important than the finer points of the Code.”  
I know perfectly well who he means. "Fuck them. You won't have him.”

“As long as you are aware of it. You know I agree with you on this one, Grace.”

“Nick, I know finding the leak is important. It would explain so much.” I yawn again. “God. I really could use some tank time.”

“Grace, really, what happened?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

“Okay. Do you need anything?”

“A new transponder, but the tank will take care of that. Ach, almost forgot. I have a sample of his DNA. The real thing, not just hairs or blood stains.”

“Bone marrow stem cells? How did you manage that? I don't think he volunteered.”

“I had to delve for it.”

“Nice. We’ll prep a tank for you. You’ll be able to go under as soon as you get here.”

“Good, that adamantium really fucked up my systems.”

There’s a moment of silence on his end of the phone line. “Stem cell DNA.” He sounds pleased. “That's excellent. That'll able us to find out his age and that will give us a baseline for the leak hunt. But I thought his bones are covered with adamantium?”

“No, come on, bone and the marrow are living structures. The adamatium just keeps the bone intact, but the veins and nerves need to get through it to the marrow.”

“Oh, I see. You're the physician here. I'll make sure they're ready for the stuff when you arrive.”

“You do that. I can't go into the tank before I loose his DNA, and I really, really need that.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“Yes, mom. He brought me stuff. I'm fine.”

“No, you're not, but let's pretend that we agree on that. Oji will be there before you know it. I'll see you when you get here.”

“Alrighty, until.”

“Okay.”


	11. The Point of Origin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We have proof that there has been a breach of the Code concerning the purity of the human genome,” Nick stated. Sattar noticed how Grace’s gaze shoot up at this but he turned his attention back to Nick. “The analysis of the DNA that Grace brought back with her confirms this beyond any doubt. Our DNA has been leaked into humans’.”

_It has to be a dream. No state of reality can be this vivid and intense._

_His right hand is inside a man’s chest, buried deep through the solar plexus and thrusted upwards beneath the ribcage. He’s sitting on the poor bastard and his fingertips are in contact with the man’s heart. There is no pulse but only the ventricular fibrillation that heralds death._

_He looks up from the man (the walls and organs of the man’s thorax surrounding his hand feel warm and tender, much like a womb). It is not dark, not really; deep shadows and dark, stealthy, skulking figures submerged within them. One shade breaks away and runs crouched over to him._

_“Nice job, little brother.”_

_The shadow has a built like his and a hungry grin; he can see the white fangs in its mouth._

_“You fucking bit the bastard’s throat in two!”The shadow smacks his shoulder and bolts away. “Next one’s mine, little brother. You can’t have ‘em all!” it barks at him as it immerses into the darkness that is vegetation._

_It is so hot, so humid. All sounds are muffled and disorienting, all without a point of origin._

_Bit? He looks down at the corpse again. The man’s throat is torn open and he can see the cartilage rings that are meant to protect the windpipe. There’s something in his mouth. He pulls his hand from the man’s chest and spits that something on his palm. It’s a piece of skin, flesh and blood mixing with his saliva, and he swallows before he realises what the gob in his mouth is._

_He knows this ain’t right. This here, right here, is the part where you’re supposed to scream your lungs out and wake up shaking, but there is no fear here. His conscious self is baffled, but the dream one beneath it is filled with exhilaration powerful enough to make him tremble. _

_Can this be the reality, a true life? There is no fear here._

_He hungers desperately for more._

_His dream-self howls as it leaps forward to follow the shade into the darkness, but the craving howl mutates in to a stretched scream that continues even after he wakes up._

* * *

“Let’s cut the crap and get right down to the business,” Nick said sitting down on one of the four sofas set to encircle a rectangular coffee table in the middle of the room. The table was block-like, one of those supposedly futuristic furniture designs: a solid, elongated cuboid with oblong hollows on all sides for shelves. The edges were hard and neat; the surface had nicks and scratches here and there. Someone’s cup had left a circular stain on one corner. 

Sattar had been staring at that stain until then. He could not name the moment he had begun to hate this particular room. He mulled over the expression pondering whether it was an unduly strong one, but he was quick to discard words like ‘dislike’ and ‘contempt’ as something not – arduous enough. He hated the room, plain and simple. He hated the fact that there were no curtains, only white standard office blinds that where always closed. He hated the blank colours: the sand of the carpet, the off-white walls, the pale grey acoustic panels on the ceiling with dark stains that he suspected were mildew. He hated sitting under them. He had spend too many hours sitting in this room listening operation debriefings and solving problems other people had created. He blamed the room for that too. He could not comprehend why it had to be so dull as a space. Coming to think about it, he would not have called it a room. It was a space, a cavity to room meetings like this one. But there were no regulations demanding dullness.

He had checked that up.

He sighed and recited silently a sutra to return his wandering mind to the present. It was his job to solve and handle problems, to find the solutions and make them work. And it was his job because he had the Talent for it. He saw things as they truly were. Others saw dangers, opportunities, advantages and problems; he saw possibilities. He held the job he had because he was the proper Talent for it, not because it had been dumped on him. He recited the sutra again, this time with closed eyes, and felt the ill temper slide away. The room was as it was just because it was the way it was. His ill will towards it was because of what entering this room had come to mean for him. He never came here to hear good news. Sattar recited the sutra yet once over and opened his eyes.

It could have been worse. It could have been yellow.

“We have proof that there has been a breach of the Code concerning the purity of the human genome,” Nick continued. Sattar noticed how Grace’s gaze shoot up at this but he turned his attention back to Nick. “The analysis of the DNA that Grace brought back with her confirms this beyond any doubt. Our DNA has been leaked into humans’.”

Oddly enough, Sattar did not feel surprised by this. Nor did Oji by Sattar’s judgement. The burly, dark man sat relaxed next to Grace. If anything he seemed thoughtful.

Grace, on the other hand, was dreadfully pale. Sattar knew Nick had ordered her resurfacing a full day short of the minimum safety limit. The healing process had clearly been left unfinished, though the tanks could work wonders even in that time. But the early resurfacing had been a tip-off that had led Sattar to expect the improbable. He did feel fear though. Things were on the move, shifting, creating a fog of war.

“So, is this – source of Grace’s an engineered human or a hybrid?” he asked. They had been tracking the irregularities in the human genome that manifested as the mutants (a human term for them) for years now, but they hadn’t had a breakthrough yet. Sattar had had enough time to consider all the possibilities his Talent could find. Even this.

Nick glanced at Oji before answering: “The source is an engineered full hybrid. Half human, half terraformer.”

“Shite,” said Grace, “but it makes sense.”

Sattar’s agreed silently. “Do we know who the Terraformer parent is?”

This time it was Oji who replied. “No. The non-human DNA is not from a single source but a combination of selected traits in our genome. And,” Oji paused to shift his weight, “there are some sequences present in his DNA that are not from our active genome.”

Grace shot a sharp look at Oji, and Sattar felt how uncertainty stirred inside him.

Oji clasped his hands before continuing. “Certain parts, in fact, a considerable part of the source’s Terraformer genome is from the Archives.”

Sattar had recognised the possibility of this days ago, but odds had been practically nonexistent. “The Archives?” He turned to stare at Nick. “Really? His Talents…?"

“Yeah. Who ever made him used Soldier DNA.”

Sattar reached to remain mindfully in the moment. It was what it was. The Code had provenly been breached. Grace was visibly shaken, but everyone remained silent as if there was nothing to be said. Sattar closed his eyes again. The Code was unbreakable just because they hold it to be so. In its essence it was merely words and agreements that created rules for their conduct, but nothing stated in it was essentially impossible. It all came down to each individual’s will, on how one chose to act. Sattar opened his eyes to glance compassionately at Grace. She was, in her own way, old school. She held the Code to be sacred, sometimes clinging on to it so stubbornly, but he thought that with her Talent and role in the grand scheme of things it quite possibly was the most meaningful thing to do. He noted that her hands were trembling.

“This frightens me,” said Oji after it became obvious no-one else was about to end the silence, “It frightens me terribly.” It frightened Sattar to hear Oji say it. The healer stood up, walked around the sofas to the window and opened the shutters, but he only took a quick peek before he closed them again. “The implications of this frighten me. I fear we have lost the argument with the High Evolutionists and that they have taken action on no-one else’s accord but their own.”

“I think,” said Grace with soft tone of acceptance in the face of the unavoidable, “that the breaching of the Code is not important, not any more now that it’s been done. It can’t be helped anymore,” she added when everyone else turned to look at her. “What I fear are the consequences this may have on the human society and the species.”

Nick appeared to be genuinely flabbergasted. “But, Grace, I thought you –“

“Aye, I know you thought. I know what you’re all thinking,” she said interrupting him with irritated shoulders. “I still think that the Code is at the core of our culture. After we leave home and come out here it is the only thing left of our mothers out here. We leave everything else behind because we have to. Most of us will never return. In fact, it is very likely none of us will return and even if we do, there will be nothing familiar left if we get back home.”

“There is the Code. Back at home too,” Sattar offered.

“It might be, it might not.” Grace leaned back against the pillows. “Things change. You know how easily they do. We do what we do because of that fact. I have seeded three planets now. For Oji this is his fifth. Has it ever been the same after you have returned home?”

Oji shook his head. “No, it has not. That has been the reason for my return out here each time.”

“You see, now?” Grace asked from Sattar. “We are homeless, in a way at least. We took this journey because we loved the principle of it. We wanted to fill the void with thinking minds and to hear the sounds of other worlds. We thought that the principles named in the Code were important and – holy. We are like those medieval Knight Templars following a calling, a code. Like they in their holy land we are out of place in here, but for us, like for them, returning home does not undo the feeling of homelessness. The holy land they sought after was not in Palestine but somewhere else. The world we are reaching for is somewhere in the future. Maybe. We’ll see how it turns out in a hundred millennia.”

“I remember how it was in Jerusalem.” Sattar felt tired. “And I know what you mean.”

Another stretch of silence threatened to fill the room and Nick was determined to deter it. “Grace is right.” The others turned their eyes on him. “This is a shitty situation and it does us no good mulling over the Code and its metaphysics. Of course there are the principles on which we all, the whole community, have agreed upon and have decided to uphold. I, personally, don’t think that the Code is that sacred, but the process is. We know that this works. We know that a slow, considered pace of evolution is more productive than an enhanced one. But that’s now gone down the drain. We know that the appearance of these – mutants is not a natural leap. Had it been, we could have just concentrated on guiding it and the culture to adjust to it, but know we have to decide if we should do something more.”

Sattar felt a calmness rising. The possibilities were limited though their outcomes were shifty. “The High Evolutionists have been gaining ground in public opinion. The threat of estrangement is strong if we go against them openly.”

“I agree,” Oji said. He scratched the crown of his bald head. “There are few who are wholeheartedly on their side, but there are many who sympathise with them. They quite likely will support the ideal of the High Evolutionists out of homesickness.”

“I think we should stop them anyhow,” said Grace sounding like the determination itself. “The human culture will not stand it if true, mature Talents start to pop up.”

“Oh, heavens above, no, it will not. The witch hunts were bad enough.” Oji got up to get a cup of coffee from the side table. “And those witches were merely small, budding Talents. But there is nothing to be done now that their DNA has been corrupted with ours. We cannot undo this. It is too widely spread already. There already are too many manifested talents out there.”

“I thought that there weren’t any true Talents yet?” Sattar felt surprised. He had trusted the DNA evidence they had gathered from the general population. The possibility was there, naturally, but he had reassured himself that the hard facts were right.

Nick shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? There has been some stories going around, but we haven’t been able to verify them. I personally know one man who must be a one, I think. He is an unbelievably strong telepath, but who knows. We don’t have his DNA.”

“Why not?” Sattar demanded.

“He keeps his distance. I always thought that he would be a natural Talent and didn’t bother with getting a sample since it’s about right time genetically for the first mature Talents to surface. I guess we should do that too now. He might be a hybrid of some sort too.”

“It is perfectly feasible for there to be more hybrids,” Sattar said after consulting his Talent.

“It would seem improbable that this acquaintance of Grace was the only one. There must be others.” Oji drank from his cup. “But what kind of hybrids would they be? He was enhanced with soldier DNA. Was he build as a weapon? If so, as a weapon for who?”

Oji’s questions opened possibilities that were dreadful and Sattar saw that the others were seeing many of them too. If there was indeed soldier DNA at loose amongst the human population, what would follow from that? What if someone did have the ability to _breed_ soldiers, to build an army out of them? There was a reason why the soldiers existed in the Archives and there was a good reason why they existed, mostly, only in the Archives.

“There might be at least one other like him.” Grace moved forward to lean her elbows on her knees. She had her knees apart and she carried her shoulders in a manner that communicated strength and an air of masculinity around her. _She truly stands between the worlds_, Sattar thought while observing her. The grief in her was gone, though he suspected she had it stored in some secret place within her. The life she had chosen was not an easy one. It was a lone one, moulded by and filled with duty and the burdens of command.

Nick turned to face her. “What makes you think so?”

“Six years ago, a few days after I had found him, I saw his face on the telly as a wanted criminal. I looked it up and he seemed to have killed two truck drivers, or something, after he had raped and practically slaughtered a female student. She survived, though I don’t know if that’s a happy ending after what was done to her. He does have that in him, the urge to kill and maim and more profoundly the ability to do so, but he did not rape that girl, I’m sure of it. Those two men, who ever they were, that was him. I dug up the postmortem examination reports on them and it was his handiwork, literally, mind you. But the girl got done by someone else. There were similarities like the numerous triple cuts and some nuances in the execution, but they weren’t his blades that made the cuts. The cuts on the girl were more rugged, like true claws.” She leaned back and sunk into the sofa. “They had got some semen out of her, but that DNA had mysteriously disappeared from the evidence storage. So, no solid proof, but my gut tells me there is at least someone quite like him out there.”

Nick had gone white and Sattar did not feel much better. There were, at least, two soldiers at large. His Talent began to produce possibilities but he shoved them off of his conscious mind and concentrated on the present.

“Grace, for fuck’s sake, you never told me,” Nick said sounding angry and terrified at same time. “You knew?”

“I suspected,” Grace corrected. “It began to seem probable.”

Nick had become even paler, if possible. “How exactly did you get his bone marrow DNA? I know you need to delve deep for it.” He paused suddenly. “It wasn’t when he stabbed you, was it, like you told me?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“How did you get to the motel? In the state you were in? You did not have the car.”

Grace avoided Nick’s eyes and even Sattar felt a knot of dread in his stomach. “I have told you this already. He drove me.”

“He drove you.”

“Aye.”

“After he had mutilated you? And you let him?”

“I was dead to the world almost literally. Could not make my objection known, really.”

“Did he do something else to you there?” The implication was evident in Nick’s voice and in Sattar’s mind the possibility was almost absolute. Oji kept his mouth shut, but did not look too concerned. Sattar knew the man always knew more that he let past his lips.

Grace lowered her gaze. “Aye, he did.” Sattar draw a sharp breath and Nick held his. “He took care of me. Had he left me out there in the empty lot, I might have died.”

Oji let a brief smile break through. “You would have died,” Oji clarified. “He had cut out your transponder, so we had no means left to find you in time.”

“Aye, he saved my life, I know that. And that makes our binding through the Code even more serious.”

Nick did not seem much relieved though. “He took care of you?”

“I told you that over the phone already. He took care of me. He cleaned me up, looked after me while I was out cold healing, got me food.”

“He could have –.”

“He could have but he didn’t. He let me live. Again.”

“He is a fascinating man,” Oji observed.

Nick waved him to shut up. “How did you get the DNA?”

“I had sex with him,” Grace said bluntly.

Nick was clearly taken back but remained silent. In Sattar’s mind a new possibility appeared but he chose to keep it to himself. Then Nick got his voice back.

“Okay, fine. You seem to think you can survive anything.”

It came Sattar’s turn to interrupt. They were getting too far off the subject. “This other – one, what do we do about that?”

Nick sighed and turned his attention away from Grace as if to ignore her completely. “Oh, I don’t know. This situation is fucked up beyond all recognition.”

Oji stepped in once again. “I see two important events here. One, someone has been breeding hybrids and two, the adamantium technology has been leaked out. This particular hybrid is, according the rate of mutations in his genome, more than hundred, even two hundred years old, not a recent one in human terms then. Therefore he was engineered and bred amongst us and yet remained unknown to us. This seems to point to somewhere high in our organisation. Even more so if there are other hybrids.”

“The adamantium, on the other hand, was not bound on him here.” Sattar said being was quite sure he knew how that one had been played out. “The technology was given to someone outside who then did it. Had it been done in one of our facilities we would have seen the energy consumption right then.”

“Right,” said Nick with renewed enthusiasm. “Someone is playin’ the humans.”

“But to what end?” Oji inquired.

“To gain power,” Grade suggested. “It usually is about power.” _Lame but true,_ Sattar thought.

“We have to find out why,” Nick decided. “And who. It might not even be the High Evolutionists, they too might be played as pawns. And in any case, we don’t want the humans to have the technology nor our DNA. They now have the technical ability to breed Soldiers and I’m sure they will if they get the chance.” He paused slightly. “What if these hybrids breed?”

“Logan won’t. He is afraid he might sire a child.”

Nick began to say something but then closed his mouth.

Sattar had a further thought on the matter. “Someone might already be breeding them. Didn’t Logan say that he had been held in a some kind of installation? Somewhere where he got his claws?”

“Aye, he thought so, but he has no idea how long he was in there. Might have been years. Could have been weeks. I think some sort of a mind washing has been done to him and that takes time to complete. Or it could be an effect of the adamantium being laced on him. What do you think, Oji?”

“Maybe. Our past experiences suggest that the adamantium process can have a strong effect on the subjects’ mental state. It is, after all, a considerable trauma even with a Soldier’s Talents. His loss of memory is an exceptional one, though. There were only two mentions of that as a side effect in our records and both of those were from the early years of that technology. Since then it has been rather successful. But Soldiers are unique in many ways. Their psyche has been designed to withstand pain and desolation. It might well be that Logan’s DNA does not include that part of the programming. He is half human. I have to check for it.” Oji squinted. “It also means that he might be fertile,” he added as if an afterthought. The others avoided the subject by taking refuge in a short silence.

“If I was in charge of that facility and project, I would try to breed them.” Grace sounded sad as she said that, but Sattar had to agree.

“True. I would too.”

“Maybe that’s how the Talents we planted in the human genome got more potent so early on in the evolution,” Nick hypothesised. “They were breeding the hybrids with humans. And maybe the someone, who ever it was that got this all going, bred with humans too.”

Oji gave the idea some thought. “It is fairly easy to regain our fertility. Or to use in vitro insemination with some gene therapy. Then one would even be able to choose what parts of our genome were to be included in the human genome. It is, if one has the technology, a reasonably simple process.”

“A fertility clinic would be ideal,” Sattar pointed out. “You would just add a little something into your clients children.”

“The increase in mutant numbers does correlate with the increasing of fertility treatments over time.”

“Breeding the Soldier hybrids with humans would bring about Soldier Talents in the offspring but we haven’t seen any, at least not strong ones, in the general mutant population,” Nick wondered.

“I would keep that group of offspring to myself,” Grace said. “That would be the product I was aiming for. And anyhow, Soldier fertility has always been low. We have always made sure their DNA is barren. If they were able to reproduce, that would more likely be because of their human side.”

“That is correct.”

A thoughtful silence followed. Sattar’s frustration with endless talking was rising its head again and he closed his eyes to fight it. 

“We have to decide something,” he said after he had failed.

“Yep, we do,” Nick concurred. “Logan is our best lead on this.”

“Aye, he may lead us on to who ever is mixed up in this. We know there was someone with considerable means hunting him.”

“Yes. Even if there hasn’t been much action during the last six years, he might still be the best bate we have. We will not bring him in. Let’s keep an eye on him instead.” Nick collected his papers. “Grace, you take care of that. Oji will start research on Logan’s DNA for more details. Sattar, you know your game. I will start to dig around the mutant community. I think I’ll get in touch with this telepath, Xavier. He has strong ethics, especially concerning mutants. I think I can get inside through him. And I will get his DNA.”

The meeting was suddenly over and Sattar stood up ready leave the room. By the door he noticed that Grace and Nick had been left behind and out of a whim he decided to wait in the hallway right next to the open door.

“Grace, watch out for this guy. He is more dangerous that you have thought. Something will happen,” he heard Nick say quietly.

“Something already happened, Nick.” Grace sounded weary.

“He could have fucked you up badly.”

“Aye, that’s true. But that’s nothing new.” Sattar shuddered. Grace continued: “I’ve been there too.”

A short silence followed. Then Nick said: “I know. That is precisely why I’m askin’ you to be careful. This guy is not your average thug or mercenary. What he might do is – He has no boundaries. That’s how he has been engineered.”

Sattar heard how Grace sighed. “I know my Soldiers.”

“But you haven’t been at the receivin’ end.”

“I have seen it. I have been present there.”

“I know that too, but those men were under guidance. He is not. He is a loose cannon and more than that. If he perceives you as a mortal threat, he will deal accordingly.”

“I’m perfectly aware of that.” Sattar could hear how she fought to keep her voice level. “I know what he’s capable of, I have seen and felt it.” She drew a long breath and sounded more composed when she continued. “He has slain me twice. Even I think it’s likely that he will – harm me again, and his violence has a tendency to progress in amount. I don’t think we have seen him at his worst yet.”

“Grace, Grainne, I don’t want it to be you who bears witness to that when it happens.”

Grace did not respond immediately. “I am bound by the Code to him. He is under my jurisdiction and under my protection. He asked me to kill him and I must be there for him if he asks me again. And –“ There was a pause.

“And what?”

“I have no fear of him.”

Nick laughed with a short bark. “You don’t fear anything.”

“Aye, I do fear, but not him.”

“Well, you should.” Now Nick sounded angry. “He will take you down.” It sounded like he was trying to scare her.

“I don’t know. He might.” Another sigh. “It might even be that that is something that has to happen.”

“For fucks sake, why?”

“I’ve been having these dreams about him.” (Sattar thought, in a passing, that that sounded a bit like a line from some cheap romance, but he know what Grace’s dreams were like.) “There is a certain familiarity about him. We are connected somehow, more than just by the Code.”

“Told you that you two have met before. In Nam, remember.”

“I remember. It’s something else. He seems more familiar.”

“And because of that you should – take your chances with him?”

Grace didn’t answer. Nick waited for a while and then walked out. Sattar made no effort to hide his presence outside the door, and Nick gave him a murdering look on the passing. Sattar shrugged it off and went back in. Grace was peering through the shutters with her back turned towards the door.

“Nick is right, you know.”

Grace looked up at him in surprise but said nothing when she saw that it was him. Sattar remained by the door for some time offering his presence to her if she needed it, but she sat down on one of the sofas in stubborn silence. Eventually Sattar gave up and left. 


	12. Circles of Influence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘This,’ she said as she touched one of the claws pinching it between her thumb and forefinger and slid them along the blade’s sides. ‘This is an augmentation. It’s not even a weaponisation. An upgrade, perhaps, but you were a product of genetic engineering even before that.’ She stood up and stepped over to him. ‘You were never a natural thing, Logan. You were made to measure from the start.’

  
Logan fucked the woman single-mindedly. Most of his attention was on the sensations, only a small, survivalist section of his intellect was focused on the larger world. He hadn’t had a good fuck in ages. Last two months had been spent on an oil rig in the North and he had grown so tired of the closed quarters that he had sworn that to be the first and last time on that particular job. The same day he had got back in town, he had taken on the first willing looker in the bar and had headed back to the one-room flat he had rented. 

He had her propped on the kitchen counter with her legs bound around his hips and her bare heels resting crossed over his buttocks, but the edge of the counter got in the way when he pushed into her. He tried to move her ass slightly over the edge and closer to him but the loss of firm footing made her tense up and unintentionally fight him. Logan cursed under his breath and lifted her up pushing all the way in and carried her over the table. He pushed her down, ass over the edge and grabbed her waist with both hands. The stance was better here. He watched how her breasts moved in rhythm with him and he leaned over to seize one into his hand. That made her sit half way up leaning on her elbows. He leaned over too and sucked her nipple into his mouth. She moved to kiss him, but he pulled her head back and bit and suck the side of her throat. He didn’t break the skin but the taste of blood filtered through. He growled, felt how his erection stiffened and filled up ahead of the orgasm. She squealed under him, arching to meet him and orgasmed – faked, he could tell but could not have cared less.

He became aware of the knock on the door while he was still moving slowly back and forth inside her, indulging himself with the woman’s warmth and wetness. He straightened up while keeping up the motion and watched her push her hands against her abdomen in pleasure. The knocking continued.

‘Fuck off!’ The knocking ceased and he grunted happily. He considered picking her up and continuing to the bed. Maybe he would let her sleep a bit before the next round. The knocking resumed. He tried to ignore it, picked her up again never pulling out of her and walked over to the bed. He kneeled down on the mattress and laid her down, but the knocking picked up an insisting tone and his rage flared. 

‘I said, fuck off!’ he yelled and stormed towards the door leaving the woman baffled on the bed. ‘Fuck off, you hear me! I ain’t gonna tell you –.’ His hand was already on the handle and he was about to yank the door open when he smelled earth and horses. He hesitated for a split second before he tore the door open to stand stark naked in front of Grace.

‘Hi ya,’ she said, smiling. ‘Full monty, eh?’

He saw her run her eyes over the length of his body and he stood there to be watched. He didn’t mind people seeing him naked as a rule, partly because he himself was acutely aware of the fact that everyone is naked under the clothing they wear. He could always smell the skin and flesh beneath the fabrics. He was also always aware of the other people’s odours: their sweat, the perfumes, dandruff, groins; the medication they were taking, the food they had eaten the day before. He knew that that dish he had been fucking was on the pill (he preferred chicks on the pill). Clothing, in his mind, was fundamentally a practical matter.

The other reason he didn’t mind to be seen naked was because he knew how people looked at him when he was naked. He thought he knew how they saw him. It was a form of control for him, a form of display for dominance, one of intimidation, one that he won. He could have grabbed a towel on his way to the door and for that split second, the instant he had smelled that it was Grace behind the door, he had considered returning to get it, but the urge to display himself and the situation had won. And so he stood there naked, still sweating from the sex, smelling of sex (he knew she would catch that) and still slightly erect. He smiled crookedly at her.

‘Why? You wanna join in?’ He stepped aside as an invitation for her to enter, but only so much that she would have to squeeze through between him and the door, so close that she would submit herself into a contact with him. She did not but moved him firmly aside on her the way through. He wanted to resist her pushing palm open on his shoulder but his body yielded to her will without a fight. It made him snarl at her.

‘I’ll pass, thank you very much,’ she said as she stepped in. He shut the door and followed her in to stand still right behind her back. His arousal made his skin sensitive to the warmth radiating from her body and her scent filled his nostrils but Grace didn’t seem to mind his propinquity. She unzipped her coat, the same old airforce blue one, and flashed a smile at the woman in his bed. ‘Hi to you too. I’m sorry to interrupt. I’ll just have a quick word with him and then I will leave you two to it, okay.‘ The woman in his bed looked utterly confused, and Grace turned back towards him.

Logan kept his eyes locked to hers. He felt her breath on him, felt how the scar in his neck began to throb. He remembered the night he had had sex with her and he suddenly caught himself regretting that he had not returned to the same bed with her. He snarled at himself but did not move away from her. 

_It’s never the same afterwards. It’s just your lust talkin’, bub._

‘What do you want?’ He kept his tone low, he didn’t want the dish to hear him. ‘Didn’t you have enough last time?’ He raised his hand and run the backside of his right hand fingers smoothly over her jaw and down the side of her throat. Something flashed over her eyes, but she didn’t budge. He let his hand fall back down on a course along her breast. She smiled and he realised that she looked younger: the thin lines radiating from the corners of her eyes were gone. It made him cautious. _It might not be her._ He inhaled deeply trying to determine by her scent whether or not she was an impostor. All he got was the familiar mixture of earth and horses and the surprise of her not being aroused by his presence. He inhaled through his teeth, grabbed her by her hair and kissed her intently licking in her taste and scent. He heard the chick in his bed draw in a short, sharp breath, heard how she stood up and walked over with a demanding stride. It amused him and he made his motions more calculated, more charged. He finished the kiss only after he was sure that what he tasted was Grace. He pulled away, halted mere inches away from her face and smiled as he wiped her lips with his thumb. There was something in the way she tasted that he liked. She repaid his gaze with calmness.

‘Suit yourself, darlin’.’ He let his voice rumble softly in his chest. ‘You know what you’re missin’ out on.’ He took a hold of Grace’s shirt hem and pulled it up to expose her abdomen and left flank. The scars were gone. He run his finger tips across her skin and it was smooth, unblemished and perfect.

His last act was too much for the lady in waiting. She pushed her body in between him and Grace, shoulders against his chest, buttocks pressing on his groin as she faced Grace.

‘Forget her. Who is she anyway.’ She moved her ass slowly from side to side; he couldn’t remember her name. The chick’s movements burned in his groin, but he kept his eyes on Grace.

‘To you, no-one,’ he replied. Grace simply stood there, patiently, in front of them with a smile hovering on the corners of her mouth. Lust rippled along his spine and he swallowed the saliva building up in his mouth. The redhead on his skin turned to face him.

‘Get rid of her, then,’ she murmured but with a voice strong enough for Grace to hear. He looked down on the chick but then back at Grace. ‘I don’t think we’re done yet,’ the woman continued while sliding her hand down his abdomen. That made his breathing deeper and he leaned slightly closer into the woman. He kept his hands relaxed on his sides, refusing to touch her, looking at Grace. The chick reached his pubic hair. 

‘I’m not done with you yet,’ she whispered and wrapped her hand around his penis. ‘You’re mine tonight.’ She released him, reached up and pulled his head down by his hair, kissed him on the lips lustily, grinding her flesh on his.

Grace held her breath as did he. The heat in his groin flared up into a burning in his shoulders. The woman kept on kissing him with her fingers tangled up in his hair, pulling at him, urging him on, tying him to her. He had learned long ago not to fight against pressure but to give into it, to move with it. He seized the woman by her throat and pushed her away forcing her to stand on her toes. Her face disappeared, got distorted in his mind. Her hair seemed darker, longer, twisting, and he hated her. She tricked a taste of a memory in him, a memory of sharp pain, removal. The loss of something.

_‘Take it on trust.’_

‘You don’t own me. I don’t need you, darlin’,’ he hissed at her face. She clawed at his fingers drawing blood. No-one tells me what to do. Not even you. ‘I am done with you.’ Before he had time to push the dish away for good, she kicked him in his groin. He kept holding her while the pain made him growl as he buckled under it. He transferred some of the agony onto the woman, squeezing his fingers closer together around her throat. His righthand claws broke the skin.

Someone called out his name and he felt a hand wrap around his rising right hand, felt skin pressing against the tips of his claws that had just broke his skin. 

‘Logan, put her down.’

_Not even you._

‘You don’t get to tell me what to do,’ he barked in return. The woman in his grip kept clawing at his hand and arm. The scrapes healed as fast as she produced them. The pressure of blood pulsed in his head.

_I belong to no-one. No-one owns me._

‘Let her go, Logan.’

He threw the woman away and whirled around to take on Grace.

He realised he was panting, panting like a dog, growling. The claws in both of his hands were now partly unsheathed. Grace took a step towards him.

‘Get your stuff, now,’ she said to someone behind his back. ‘Get your stuff and get out, now.’ He heard someone scramble about somewhere beyond his field of vision.

‘Good girl,’ Grace said reassuringly, ‘Walk to the door, slowly. Do not run.’ He heard steps and he began to turn his head towards to the sound.

‘Logan.’

He snapped his attention back to Grace.

‘Let her go. It’s me you’re after.’

Grace was walking towards him. The steps behind him reached the door. He let them go.

‘You,’ he said at Grace, ‘I’m not finished with you.’

He smelled her blood, smelled the wounds on her. Smelled him on her. Smelled the grass. The room got darker, somehow. Distant. Distant sounds of cars passing by. Blood all over him. On his hands. He looked down at his hands and his abdomen. _Where’s the blood?_ he thought. He looked up and at Grace who was standing at the feet of the bed, looking at him. Calm. Calm. He looked at his hands again. _No blood. No blood at all. There should be blood._ And then she. Calm. Calm. Calm.

_She’s not afraid of me,_ he remembered. She held his stare for a moment, then bend down to straighten the bed spread before sitting down on the mattress. He heard the springs move under her weight as he looked down at his body again. No blood. Nothing. Clean. He was clean. 

He let the rage die. He muscles relaxed and he realised that his claws we now fully extended. He withdrew them winching involuntarily at the pain and straightened his back. His neck was stiff and he twisted his head to the right to relieve the tension. Grace waited in silence.

Logan sat down on the well worn armchair facing the bed. The upholstery had lost its velvety feeling and the exposed raw canvas was uncomfortable against his bare skin. 

‘You’re ok?’ asked Grace quietly. Logan thought that she did seem concerned.

‘I’m fine.’ He kept his legs apart and his arms spread on the arm rests. He was hot and sweaty, but the adrenalin was already giving way to a cooler breeze moving over his body. He knew the posture was imposing. He let his head fall back for full exposure. He waited a while before looking again at her. 

‘What the fuck do you want?’

Grace flashed a quick smile as if nothing had happened. ‘I need to talk to you, like I said. There’s been a development.’

‘Is that so, darlin’.’ He hoped he sounded unconcerned enough. He kept his posture though he felt tired. He wanted to sleep. ‘What happened to your skin? Did you pay some skin doctor to get rid off the scars I cut onto you?’

Grace flinched ever so slightly at that. Most people would have missed it entirely but his senses caught the movement. That same sharpness of perception he had learned to count on.

‘No. I was healed.’

‘How?’

Grace hesitated. She lowered her gaze and looked at her palms. He remembered how she had reacted to his questions about the sword.

‘How?’ he demanded. Graze glanced up at the door.

‘There’s something you need to know, Logan, something about yourself.’ 

He had time, he reminded himself. _No need to push it. Take your time. One step at a time. Follow it through._ ‘No kiddin’, darlin’? Did you figure that one out all by yourself?’ 

He smelled sadness on her before she spoke.

‘Last time, in the motel, I took a sample of your DNA.’

The almost forgotten wedge inside his heart burrowed a little further in. _‘Take it on trust.’_ He leaned forward. ‘You did what?’

‘We analysed it. We wanted to know what you are.’

‘We?’ He stood up, loomed over her. ‘Who the fuck is we?’ Then it hit him. ‘_What_ I am? You wanted to know _what_ I am?’

The world of things seemed paralysed for a while.

‘Aye, what you are. We wanted to know what you are.’ Her voice was heavy and she looked past him. ‘And we know now.’

He lost himself. The body didn’t feel like his but a foreign entity, something out of sync with the mind captured inside it. He sat down again. ‘I’m a mutant, a freak of fuckin’ nature. I know that.’ He tried to console himself with that._ I already know what she’s about to tell me. She won’t take me by surpris_e. ‘I already know what I am. I want to know who I am.’

She reached over to touch him on his knee. ‘Oh, Logan, mo caraid, I don’t know who you are. 

I can only tell you what you are.’

‘I know what I am,’ he said stubbornly, ‘I’m a mutant.’

‘It’s not that simple. You’re much more.’

_‘You are so much more, Wolverine, much more than what you used to be.’_ He shook the voice off his mind.

Logan stormed up and in her face. ‘Who are _you_? Who are you to know what I am?’ his spat the words at her face. ‘_What_ are _you?_ I know you’re not a mutant. You don’t smell like a mutant, you smell like a human and you can still pull off all this weird shit.’ He pulled back from her as the thought fully dawned at him. ‘What the fuck are _you_?’ He poked his finger at her chest, hard, knowing it would cause pain. ‘You’re not human either, are you?’ He felt how a remembered water, a tepid liquid rose to his ankles, crept higher, twining around his calves. _The water changed me,_ he remembered, _I was different after I got out._

‘Logan,’ she said sitting calmly on the bed, looking sad, unthreatening, ‘I am human – I am what the humans in time will be, and you are not a mutant, not as such.’

‘What the fuck do you mean? Not a mutant as such. What the hell does that mean? What other kinds are there supposed to be?’

‘You. And others.’

‘Okay, fine, what the hell.’ He was scared but he’d be damned if he would let her see it. ‘Let’s have it your way, then. What am I, darlin’? Tell me, what the fuck am I?’ He swung his arms open to underline the question. ‘What is,‘ waved at his naked body, ‘all this?’

‘You are a result of genetic engineering, Logan.’

For a moment he simply stood there. _‘You are my master piece, Wolverine.’_ ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘You were manufactured, Logan. You were made to measure.’ She looked at his eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

His nervousness burst out as laughter. The laughter died a way but he kept the smirk on his face. She seemed unmoved. Logan inhaled and closed his eyes for a bit before looking at his arm. He let the claws come out slowly, steadily from between his knuckles meaning every ounce of menace contained within the act. ‘I was made to measure, darlin’. I know that already.’ He turned the hand around and opened his fingers to see the palm of his hand. _‘Your life is in your hands.’_ ‘Ain’t that obvious.’ He extended the arm towards her, closed his fist and turned his hand around turning it into a threatening gesture as the claws and his knuckles faced her. ‘I want to know what I was before this.’

‘This,’ she said as she touched one of the claws pinching it between her thumb and forefinger and slid them along the blade’s sides. ‘This is an augmentation. It’s not even a weaponisation. An upgrade, perhaps, but you were a product of genetic engineering even before that.’ She stood up and stepped over to him. ‘You were never a natural thing, Logan. You were made to measure from the start.’

Logan thought she sounded like she wanted to frighten him with the facts. ‘You’re saying I was bred?’

‘Aye.’

‘Purpose bred?’

‘On purpose, aye.’

He pulled his arms close to his sides. ‘For what purpose?’

‘As a weapon.’

‘To slaughter,’ he said filling in what was she had left unsaid.

She held her breath before answering and turned her face away from him before she did: ‘That is one use of weapons, yes.’

_That’s what I do. It’s what I’m best at._

The sweat on him had dried and the skin on his sides felt sticky against the undersides of his upper arms. He looked at his biceps. He was sturdy, well-build. He rarely trained but he still stayed pretty much in shape. He did gain muscle from practice and he did loose some if he put his feet up for month or two, but not much. He had thought that it was because of his mutation. He squeezed his fist close tightly and followed how the muscles in his arm bulked under his skin. He was hairy, very hairy though not abnormally so; he had seen fellows as hairy as him and some even hairier. It wasn’t like he had fur, just hair all over, but putting two and two together he had thought himself to be one of those feral mutants, mutants with animal-like qualities. Now she was saying that he wasn’t.

_I was built, put together. Engineered. Manufactured. _

_But I was born. I must’ve had a mother_.

His skin felt sticky.

‘I’m gonna take a shower.’ 

‘I’ll wait,’ he heard her reply as he shut the bathroom door behind him.

  
* * *

I was half through the ancient copy of Reader’s Digest I had found lying in a pile of newspapers on the table before Logan was done washing the world away from his system – and the smell of sex from his skin, I would imagine. He left the bathroom door open when he was done to help to vent the moisture and walked over to the window and pushed it slightly open to create a draft that would suck the steam out even faster. A slow stream of traffic scrabbled past the building and the sound of the city crawled in. I kept on reading to give him the space he needed. 

He had emerged from the bathroom in his jeans with the buttons undone and the hairs on his back still slightly damp. I got through several pages before he stopped staring out of the window and came to stand close to me behind the armchair. I kept on reading. He felt like a wall behind me. I waited leaning in on the pressure his presence created. He felt comfortable standing a feet or so behind me, not only comfortable to me but comfortable for him to be standing there at ease though deep in thought. I finished the article and begun to read the next one, a piece on some dramatic survival story full of amazing luck and heroism. 

He stepped closer after six or seven pages. I had my hair open and I felt his fingers move along my shoulder and neck as he pushed his hand underneath my hair. I put the copy down.

‘I like your scent,’ he said and left his hand resting around my neck with his thumb stroking ever so softly the skin below my ear.

‘My scent? Most people would say they like the way someone smells, don’t they?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not like most people. The way you smell is different from your scent. And I like your scent.’ He pushed his hand further up into my hair bending my head slightly forward. ‘I liked the way she smelled, hot and willing, but I prefer your scent.’ 

_Hot and willing?_ ’What’s the difference?’ I wanted to know more of the way he experienced the world. With his senses everything had to be so different. ‘What’s the difference between smell and scent?’

He leaned closer and sniffed my hair. ‘Smells change. Fear, lust, love, rage, sleep, foods eaten, illnesses, all that changes all the time. Scent is more stable. I can recognise people by their scent. Their smell tells me what they’re up to.’

‘Is that why you kissed me at the door?’

He chuckled softly. ‘Smart girl, Grainne, smart girl. I had to be sure it was you and the best way to get someone’s scent is by tastin’. Smelling alone is not as reliable.’ He grabbed my hair and twisted my head around to him. His lips where soft. ‘I’d know your taste from anythin’,’ he said smiling cunningly before straightening up again. His hand kept on caressing my neck.

‘I always though that I was abused by whoever put this shit in me,’ he said after a while, softly. ‘I’ve always known someone made me but I thought had lived a regular life before that. But,’ he continued as he brushed his fingers higher up into my hair, ‘if I was engineered from the start, if I was a product, then where’s the abuse?’ He pulled his hand down and followed my spine with his fingers. ‘I was born to be someone’s property.’

Somehow his line of thinking didn’t seem honest but more like a way of digging for information. It suited me just fine. ‘The children of slaves are born as someone’s property,’ I reminded him, ‘and if anything, their whole existence is abuse. The fact that you were made means nothing as such.’ Maybe he was being honest. I tried to delve gently into him to get a sense of his mental state but he used his adamantium to push me out.

‘Don’t try that, darlin’. I know how to keep you out now,’ he said squeezing my neck, ‘and I don’t want to – .’ He left the sentence unfinished as he pulled his hand away. I turned half way around to see him. He buttoned up his jeans and buckled his belt before looking down on me, and I got the impression that he was doing that in both senses of the word.

‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘but slaves are born humans. If you’re tellin’ the truth here, I don’t count as a human. I was manufactured.’

I adjusted my pose to fit more comfortably in the chair. He looked calm.

‘Bulldogs were bred to fight bulls but now they are pets like any other dog. Times change, things loose their original purpose and find new meanings.’

‘So I’m a dog now, a pet?’ He smiled under dark eyes but did not laugh.

‘I’m sorry, that was a bad analogy,’ I said and turned my back to him. He remained somewhere in my peripheral vision.

‘I told you not to feel sorry for me.’ He stepped around the armchair, grabbed it by the armrests and dragged it with me in it closer to the bed where he sat down facing me. There he lost the momentum and fell into staring at the floor.

‘Logan, listen, we don’t know who engineered you, not even when you were made. Your regenerative ability makes it impossible to tell.’

‘I can’t be that old, can I? Maybe I was born in that place I escaped from, the one where they put the metal in me? I know that military technology can be years ahead of civilian tech but genetic engineering, hell, that’s science fiction. Even today.’

‘I, actually, think that you are rather old,’ I said. I didn’t even wish to tell him how wrong he was about the technology. ‘I did first meet you just before the Vietnam war, long before your adamantium claws, remember?’

He looked up at me. ‘If that’s so then I was not engineered, right? Was I some kind of a test tube kid, an egg fertilised and then showed into some poor woman’s womb?’ A shadow seemed to sit down on his shoulder and he leaned in to grab my left arm. ‘Or was she inseminated like a cow? Or was she covered by some suitable – fuckin’ – stud.’ He looked disgusted with the words he had chosen. I knew he was thinking about himself, his fear of all the things he was capable of. He was twisting my arm painfully but unintentionally.

‘Who knows the exact method.’ We do, I thought, but left it unsaid. I wasn’t about to tell him the whole truth. There had been an embryo built from selected pieces of suitable genomes, inserted into an unknown birthing mother. ‘We don’t even know who did it.’ At least that much was true.

He stared at me for a moment, looked then at his hand holding my arm and letting it suddenly go with a startled twitch. His grip left red bruises. Logan stood up and walked away to close the window. I lift my arm to have a closer look at the damage.

Logan sat again on the bed. I glanced at him but turned my attention back on my arm twisting the elbow inwards to check the underside of my arm. I was about to have his handprint around my upper arm for a while. I let the arm back down but he caught my hand the halfway down and pulled it towards himself firmly but gently. His other hand took hold of my elbow.

‘It’s fine,’ I said as he examined the bruising himself, ‘It’ll soon be gone.’ He payed no attention to my words but took his time without a reply. I watched his neck and shoulders as he gently moved my arm about to get the full picture. He still wore his hair as a longish mane. He let my arm go when he was satisfied but did so gently, resting it on the armrest. He leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed the lefthand knuckles. He sighed and looked up.

‘So you can heal yourself,’ he said looking tired.

‘I can but not as well – or fast – as you can.’

He nodded. ‘Is that a part of my,’ he paused to search for an expression, ‘weapon character?’

‘Aye, it is,’ I admitted. He flashed a wry smile before pushing the hair back from his forehead.

‘I can see how that comes handy in combat.’ His eyes took on a darker shade of brown. ‘I have seen how it comes handy.’

He sat in silence for a moment but kept looking at me.

‘You had scars before,’ he said suddenly, ‘How come, if you can heal yourself, you had scars before but now they’re gone?’

I knew I was screwed. 

  
* * *

Logan watched Grace squirm in her seat. He smiled and pulled her armchair even closer, so close that her knees came in contact with the bed between his legs. Her scent enveloped him as he intruded into her personal space. He turned her face towards the light by her jaw.

‘Six years ago,’ he said moving her head slightly from side to side, ‘you had small lines around your eyes.’ He let her head go. ‘Now they’re gone too. That’s interestin’, darlin’. You got younger. How’s that possible? I don’t age and I heal but I don’t get younger.’ He lifted his chin thoughtfully. Grace looked reserved. He looked at her knees between his thighs. ‘Know what I’ve been thinkin’?’ he said and wrapped his hands around the sides of her lower thighs just above her knees. ‘If I was engineered then the genetic material used to build me must’ve come from somewhere, right? Any ideas, Grainne?’ he asked and looked up at her. She looked even more reserved with the smell of concern emanating from her skin. He knew she was hiding something. She wasn’t actually lying to him, she just wasn’t telling him everything. He could smell it. He had encountered that smell before. ‘Anythin’? No? Not a clue?’ He smirked contently at her.

Logan stood up and went to get a long-sleeved T-shirt from his closet. Grace stayed in her chair. ‘I think the DNA came from you.’ Grace turned her ear slightly more towards him but did not look directly at him.

‘From me?’

Logan returned to sit on the bed in front of her with the shirt still in his hand. ‘Not you, personally. You, who ever you lot are.’ Grace did not let a single expression slip across her face. Logan found himself to be unsure on how to move forward. He knew he could, now that he knew how to keep her out of him, force answers from her, but he knew he would have to resort to extreme means. She would not be intimidated by him and their conversation by the pool had revealed to him that torture by pain would probably be pointless. She apparently had been through that before, and she didn’t fear death. Most torture victims were easy second targets with their memories but she – probably not. He wouldn’t bet his money on that being a success. And besides, torture, if you had to go beyond mere threats, was a fucked-up way of getting information. Everybody lied. Even him.

He straightened his back and put the shirt on.

He didn’t know what to do with her. He wanted the information. He took hold of her knees, put his palms and fingers under her thighs and waited for an idea to form. You have time, all the time you need.

There was a warmness radiating through his hands. It rose up his wrists and seeped deeper into his arms. He felt the muscles of his arms bathe in the comfort of the warmth, felt how they relaxed, quietly. He felt the tiny cavities left between the individual muscles, felt the smoothness of the membranes around the muscles. He closed his eyes as the warmth reached the adamantium. The sensation made him exhale in pleasure. 

_‘It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Afterwards. Take my word for it. Trust me. You can take it. You can take it.’_

He snarled, aloud. The muscles in his neck tightened as a reaction to a forgotten danger and he grabbed Grace by the jacket. ‘No,’ he barked, ‘you don’t get to do that anymore.’ He pulled her up and threw her on the floor without letting go of her jacket. He fell with her landing on her but got on to his feet quickly dragging her up with him. ‘You don’t get to do that anymore,’ he repeated spitting at her face. She stared at him, body sluggish with its weight supported mainly by his hands. ‘You don’t get to do that anymore,’ he said again, more quietly this time, ‘Ever.’ He let the claws slither out. They were still slightly warmer than usually.

_‘You can take it. You are perfect, flawless.’_

‘I think you were engineered to take the adamantium,’ he heard her say. He looked at her and saw that she too was looking at the claws. Her hand rose up and she touched one of the claws with her fingers. ‘Adamantium is poisonous to most humans on long term. And it has to be applied on the bones of the recipient as liquid. Once it hardens it’s virtually indestructible. You were right, that night. It was because you were perfect but you were not chosen. You were made.’

He watched as she wrapped her fingers around a claw, slowly and with caution. Something bundled up in his belly. He kept looking at her fingers now enveloping the claw tightly.

‘You were right, I am not perfect,’ he heard her say, ‘I do scar. And I can’t heal myself that quickly.’ Something in her voice compelled him to turn his eyes at hers. She smiled at him and then slid her hand swiftly along the claw. He felt how the edge of his claw cut into her fingers and he let her go. The bundle in his belly tightened up and moved up into his chest pressing against his sternum. It was a strange feeling, an odd kind of panic as he saw blood ooze through the fingers of her fist. He looked at his hand, at the claws. The one between his index finger and the middle one was coloured in red. _Her._ He felt sick. 

He saw the blood dribble down the softly gleaming silver and his eyes followed as the droplets begun to fall to the floor. It was then that he heard the sound of larger drops hitting the floor and he looked back up. Grace just stood there. Her hand was squeezed into a tight fist but she had let it fall to her side where it kept bleeding on the floor. She appeared sad as she looked at him.

The smell of her blood got to his nose and made the taste of bile rise up in his throat.

_I will not throw up._

The blood continued to dribble on the floor beginning to form a small puddle beside her feet. He watched as it creeped closer to the sole of her boot. _She can heal herself_, he thought, reassuringly. His hands felt cold but he didn’t dare to withdraw the claws: he did not want to have her blood enter him with the steel. _It’ll stop any moment now. When she heals herself._ He turned his eyes away from the blood and looked at her instead. He waited. Grace accepted his gaze and remained where she was, two, three feet away from him. She looked calm with her pulse steady as he eavesdropped on its beat. He glanced at the floor again. The dribble from her fingers was now a steady trickle showing no sings of slowing down. 

Logan gave up. He turned his back to her and went to the bathroom where he rinsed and washed the now sticky blood from his claw before drawing them all in. The pain made him close his eyes. He dried his hands on a clean towel and he took it with him as he returned to the room. Her hand was still bleeding and he had to push against the smell of blood as he walked closer to her. For a moment he stood in front of her staring into her eyes as a challenge but she held her gaze leaving him no other choice but to take a hold of her damaged hand. He coaxed her fingers apart while ignoring the taste of bile in his throat and the coldness around his spine. The cut run across the upper part of her palm, just under the base of her fingers, and the flesh gaped open revealing what he feared was the bones. Blood kept pouring out and showed no signs of coagulation. It was amazing how quickly the blood flowed from the wound to fill up the cup of her palm. He pressed the towel against the wound and wrapped his hand around hers to keep pressure on it.

‘Grace, you have to let it heal.’ He kept the grip tight. He felt something under his bare foot and realised, as he looked down, that he had stepped into the blood. He cursed.

‘Help me sit down,’ Grace said. Logan lift his wet foot. He balanced on the other one and managed to wipe most of the blood away with the loose end of the towel as Grace supported him with her good arm. He kept her damaged one elevated and walked her back to the armchair. She held on to both of his hands as she eased herself down. The bloodstain on the towel kept on growing slowly. It baffled him. Why didn’t she make the bleeding stop like she had set his years ago?

‘Logan, can I trust you?’

Logan didn’t know what to answer. The towel was getting wetter._ She ought to heal herself._ ‘Why?’

  
* * *

I didn’t know if he meant why I wanted to know if I could trust him or why should I trust him. 

‘Remember when I healed the cut in your neck after it didn’t stop bleeding?’ I asked. Logan looked reserved but nodded anyhow. ‘I can do that to myself too, but with more serious damage, like my hand here,’ I shifted my hand slightly but he resisted the movement and gave me a stern look, ‘with these kinds of wounds, if I want them to heal properly, that’s not enough by itself.’

‘So we need to get you to a hospital?’ He sounded concerned and unwilling.

‘No.’ I sighed. ‘You asked what has happened to my scars.’ He nodded again. ‘Like you said, I can heal myself but it’s not as good an ability as yours. You heal automatically, instantly, but I don’t. I have to make it happen if I want it to be any faster than the natural rate.’

‘I kinda figured that out by myself.’ He adjusted his grip on my hand and frowned when he saw how much blood there was in the towel. ‘It doesn’t explain the scars.’ 

‘If I have to heal fast, I have to choose between it and scarring. So if I heal quickly I will have the scars.’

He squinted his eyes looking thoughtfully at me. ‘All the scars I saw on you where combat wounds,’ he said and sat finally down on the bed again keeping my hand elevated above my heart. ‘But now they’re gone.’

‘I can heal scars if I take the time and effort. You, and the adamantium, left me in such a mess that it took days to fully heal and recover.’ I didn’t mention about the tank and Oji. For him the tank was not a device of healing, and I didn’t want to make things any more complicated. ‘The scars got healed then.’

Logan had still his reservations. ‘Why hadn’t you healed them before?’

I closed my I eyes for a second. ‘I needed the reminder.’ Logan had a questioning look when I looked at him again. ‘They got healed as a side effect. My healing after –,’ I almost said you but managed to bit my tongue, ‘The damage was so extensive that it was less trouble to heal everything without trying to figure out what was necessary and what wasn’t. So, the scars got taken care of too.’

‘A side effect, right.’

I needed his trust if I was to keep an eye on him. ‘I want to show you how I heal without scarring.’ Logan stared at me unmoved. Something in his pose made me uncomfortable and I shuffled my weight around as I steered clear of his eyes. ‘But I need to delve inwards for that.’

‘Delve?’ He had that annoyed frown on his brow.

‘You remember how I died on you back at the cottage?’ That made him sneer, but he said nothing. ‘And how I located those soldiers later?’

‘Yeah. So?’

‘And how I,’ I paused to find a suitable word, ‘ – highjacked your body?’

That made him give me a look darker than coal. ‘Yeah,’ he said almost growling, ‘I do.’

‘All those were outward delves. Situations where I reached outside of myself, beyond me, I suppose. But if I want to heal myself I have to reach inwards, into me.’

Logan thought about what I had said. ‘Sounds like bullshit to me but let’s pretend I believe you. So?’

I looked at my hand. The fingers felt cold and the towel was soaked. I could not let it keep on bleeding much longer. ‘When I delve inwards I loose the connection with the world, sort of pass out. I can’t hear or anything.’ I though for a moment. ‘You could say it’s a kind of coma.’

‘So you can’t react to what happens around you, right? Not like you could if you did – delve outwards?’

I smiled: he remembered the stunt he had pulled at the cottage. ‘Aye, I can’t. Well, I can, actually, but it takes time to get my wits back so I can’t risk it in combat. I have to be in a safe place.’

Logan checked on my hand. He had a baleful smile on his face when he turned his attention back to me. ‘So, if you try to heal your hand here,’ he said, ‘you’d be at my mercy.’

‘Aye, I would be.’

The smile died away. His eyes got darker, deeper somehow. It had been a long while since I had last seen the hound in him. He pulled my hand down and opened my fingers. He looked at the open wound and rubbed my fingers gently. He put the towel back on and squeezed my hand in his.

‘Yeah, you can trust me,’ he said softly and turned to look at me. His eyes where reserved but warm. ‘Go ahead. Do you need somethin’?’ I knew his curiosity had won over his suspiciousness.

‘Keep an eye on me, will you? Put a blanket on me if my temperature drops. And don’t get scared if I seem unresponsive. I’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. It’s just a part of the process. I’ll be fine afterwards. Don’t worry about it. The same thing happened in that motel.’ I let my consciousness fall back as I said that. I smiled at him and closed my eyes as the image of him began to blur. I leaned back. ‘Take the towel off. Watch. It’ll be just fine.’

  
* * *

_‘You’ll feel magnificent afterwards. You’ll come out of it as something new, a superior being.’_

Grace went limp in the chair. All the natural tension left her body so suddenly and so completely that it seemed as if someone had cut the strings of a puppet. Her head fell forward and he almost lost the hold on her hand. He waited for a while, not quite sure why, then grabbed her by the breast of her jacket and hauled her over onto the bed. He moved her around a bit adjusting her into the recovery position leaving her cut hand straight with the palm open and upwards. It still bled, but he let it be. If she truly could do what she claimed then little blood was nothing. He stood up and looked down at her. She seemed okay there with her left hand under her cheek. He run his eyes down her form. 

_Well. It’s all up to you now, darlin’._

His gaze halted at her boots and he decided to remove them. She had the laces tied with double knots. He pulled the shoes off and placed them side by side at the side of the bed. He folded the bedspread over her feet, then continued up along her body wrapping up every inch of her to keep her warm. He remembered the hypothermia from the last time. He checked the result tucking the spread a bit further in under her here and there. His hands moved a touch slower where he wrapped the fabric around her hips. He let his fingers pause where they had pushed the hem deeper under her hips feeling the weight of her body on them.

_I wouldn’t mind gettin’ in bed with you again, though, girl._

The thought popped into his head unannounced. He cleared his throat and escaped over to the dining table to get a chair to sit in at her side so that he could watch the wound heal, but the nervousness the thought had brought up did not disperse. He turned the chair around and sat down astride with his elbows on the wooden backrest. He kept his eyes purposefully on her palm. The bleeding had stopped. He got up again and went to get a rag. He wiped the slowly clotting blood away, carefully, trying to avoid rubbing away what scab may had formed. 

The wound looked clean, clean-cut. She had applied just the right amount of pressure for his claw to cut thought the muscle and other tissues in her palm but still light enough for the claw to keep from slicing though the bones. Logan could see the tendons, some of which were cut too, but nothing seemed to be happening apart from the now ceased bleeding. He looked at his own palm thinking about all his wounds he had seen closing right in front of his eyes.

_She said it would be slow._ He rested his chin on his forearm like a dog resolved to wait until his master was ready. _She’ll get there._

_She will._

Her face was peaceful and he took full use of the opportunity to study her features. He looked for the thin lines around the corner of her eyes even when he knew they were gone and he tried to remember the colour of her eyes but failed there too. He thought they were brown, brown like her hair, dark to the point of being almost black but not quite.

He picked his head up. _Who cares._ He rushed up to grab a beer from the fridge. He tossed the cap onto the counter and went to sit in the armchair at the end of the bed. He took a sip and sighed. Her scent blended with the aroma of his artisan beer with which he indulged himself regularly. He inhaled thoroughly to draw it all in and his nose found his own scent wrapping around hers. He took a gulp, closed his eyes and pictured the redhead he had been with when Grace had appeared at his door. He reminisced about the form of the chick’s body, conjured up the curve of her ass under his hands. He tried to remember her smell, her arousal. He inhaled trough his teeth. 

_He turned his head around to see a riot of red hair behind him. There was a smell, a scent. Spicy, some would call it. Pleasing to him, bit like cinnamon. He chuckled at this thinking it too perfect to the point of being in danger of being artificial. He began to turn around, to face her, reaching for her but she moved away saying something he didn’t quite catch. The woman, whoever she was, moved away from him and dissolved into darkness. He tried to follow her but now he was tethered down on a slab, unable to move with the coldness of steel pressing under him. The scent of something like cinnamon lingered._

His lungs gasped for air. The scent of cinnamon always made him sick. Except in that hallucination. In it it aroused him. 

Grace was still unconscious on the bed. _As she ought to be._ Logan gulped down a mouthful of his beer and stood up. He zeroed in on her pulse, caught its rhythm and counted the beats to be slightly under thirty per minute. Her breathing was equally slow in comparison but deep and relaxed, not like she had been breathing during that one night long time ago. He walked over to her and finished the beer while looking at her. She had such a thick, rich hair, slightly curly in a rugged sort of a manner. He sat down on the bed. The weight of his bulk caused the mattress to give moving her as it adjusted to the new pressure. A lock of her hair fell over her face and he reached to pull it back. Her cheek felt warm. He lifted her cut palm to see the wound. It was still unclosed but healing: he could see newly formed ligaments and flesh at the bottom of the cut. Tension in the muscles along his spine relaxed as a relief he had not expected reached them. He put her hand back down, gently.

Logan laid the empty bottle on the chair next to the bed. He got up, unbelted his jeans and took them off. The shirt followed but he made sure he had both garments folded neatly on the back rest. He avoided looking directly at her face as he climbed over her onto the other side of the bed.

_God, I’m tired. I need the sleep._ He kept staring at the ceiling. The scent of cinnamon crept forward from his lost memories making his skin crawl. He turned to his side, towards Grace. He didn’t know who the redhead he dreamt about was. She was always enveloped in a mantle of painful wanting, even lust sometimes. He didn’t know why, he just wanted her, badly. But when he was not dreaming (or hallucinating) of her, the scent of cinnamon felt threatening, like it felt now even when he knew it was just a memory and not a real sensation. 

He pulled the duvet from under him and wrapped it around his legs and waist. Some of the soft quilt was stuck under Grace and he left it there using it as an excuse to get closer to her. He liked the way her hair smelled: it was something familiar, something he knew intimately, something real. He moved his arm carefully and gently stroked her hair keeping his touch as light as possible. 

_I want her too. I want her for me to hold._


	13. The Line of Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She finally screamed then. It was an inhumane, soul obliterating screech that penetrated into his body and through it, slashed agains him, and he had to fight to keep himself from bolting away from her. She seemed to scream forever, again and again, over and over and over. Luckily he had chosen a building where no-one would care or would dare to interfere. He just held her, clung onto her even when her fear begun to cling onto him and his hands started to ache. 
> 
> This is all on me. 
> 
> I wonder how many others there are. How many other lives that I have desolated.

  


  
_The door opens and the light burns my eyes like laser beams. I squint, even though it doesn’t help much after the aeons of darkness, but I don’t want to turn my head away. I don’t dare to. I want to see what’s coming, and the light is a piddling pain in comparison. _

_The doorman thrusts the door open all the way and it bangs against the wall. He apparently looks at me but I can’t be sure: I only see a distorted, black figure against the burningly bright light that eats away all contours. I assume he does since he doesn’t move for a while before stepping back to make way for someone else behind the wall._

_‘Okay, all yours,’ he says to whoever it is beyond what the doorway reveals. I want to brush the hair away from my face but I can’t be bothered. A familiar presence shades the light filling up the doorway with his broad frame. I welcome the shade, it lessens the pain in my eyes even if or precisely because I know it’s the only good thing that he will grant me._

_I don’t get up, don’t even sit up. There’s no point. He steps in bowing slightly as he passes under the lintel. He stops in front of me and his boots fill my field of vision. Someone hangs a trouble light on the hook by the door. The door closes and the soft, artificial glow of the bulb is balm to my eyes. I look up and he looks down on me. We both know how this goes._

_He pushes me over to my stomach with his boot, not kicking, just moves me around like I was a stone on a path or a log to sit on. I appreciate that; it’s the little things that count here. Just like the shade. And the trouble light. You need to count your blessings and know when to quit._

_He kneels down on me, like he always does, one knee on my spine just below the shoulder blades. He’s heavy. I adjust my head as his weight hampers my breathing; I know he does it on purpose._

_He holds still, much longer than usually. I count that as a blessing too. Then I feel his fingers in my hair as he pulls the locks away from my face and tucks them behind my ear. Strange. Scary. He never does that. I can’t remember him ever touching me unless for pain. I can’t keep my muscles from tensing up under him and I know he will notice. I hold my breath._

_He keeps on stroking my hair, lets my matted shag of hair slip through his fingers. He doesn’t pull on the knots but lets them pass. I’m confused. He never does that. Never, not once. I’m scared for the first time in a long while. Had forgotten how it feels._

_He pulls away and I could swear I hear him sigh. He makes me wait again. I hear him unbuckle his belt._

_‘Let’s get this over with.’_

_Wait! Did he speak? He has never spoken before. Did he really say something? Wait! Wait! What did you say, I want to say but I can’t. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I last spoke. I try to push my shoulders off the floor so that I could see him, but he grabs my hair on the back of my head and pins my forehead down against the stone._

_‘Don’t,’ he says into my ear and this time I’m sure I hear him speak. It sounds like a growl, a warning, and I take the hint. I feel his breath in my ear. I give up. ‘Good girl,’ he says softly. I feel him move away. He lifts his knee off my back and puts it between my thighs. I count my blessings and give up. I feel his hands on my pelvis._

  


* * *

  


The touch of a heavy hand on my loin burned like branding iron and I woke up. The hand didn’t disappear. It was a real, solid touch weighing down on me. I could smell him. I heard his breath, calm, calculating, impersonal. The touch of his hand held me still, thumb just above my hipbone, the fingers spread on my back; the palm in contact, warm, affirming the state of affairs. It’s him. I would have known that touch from anything.

He was sitting down on the bed next to me. The mattress had yielded under him causing my body to lean against his hip; I was lying on my left side. He moved his hand to the small of my back, then up wards with a movement akin to a caress. I would have shivered but I knew to stay still, absolutely still under him. It was easier that way. Less pain. Over sooner. I kept my eyes closed. I was in a bed and it was all I wanted to know: the soft mattress, the blanket across my legs. His hand moved upwards towards my neck and he stroked my hair, my shoulder, the side of my neck with the fingers touching gently on my throat and the artery leading up to my brain. I tried not to but I begun to shiver. He would not like that, I knew. I tried so hard not to. I’m sorry I wanted to say, but I failed that too. I heard myself whimper.

He pushed me over to my back, gently but irresistibly, and I felt my body obey. I begun to shake. It was a new thing, to be turned over to my back, he had always had me lying on my belly. He shifted his body coming up closer to my face; he had left his hand on my shoulder. He stroked my cheek with his free hand, gently, almost as if trying to be reassuring. His smell. I had though it was over, but there he was.

‘Grace?’

It was the voice that set me off, the deepness of it, the dark rumble. The pent-up energy of fear burned through and I lashed out with all I had. I grabbed his hair, yanked his head back and managed to sink my knee into his side just under his armpit. I got tangled up in the blanket as I fought and he had so much more muscle and sheer weight on him. He pinned me down, swearing as he grabbed my hands. I tried to pry myself free, to throw him off, to unroot him. His hands came down on my shoulders and I countered with a kick at him, tried to get my legs between us. I got one hand free and threw a wide punch but it got blocked and my wrist was closed within his fist. My panic found a new level of intensity. I gave up the fighting and tried to let myself fall down, down through the layers of consciousness, all the way through into the nothingness of disassociation but my mind would not let go; he had me well in hand. A scream built up in my chest as I got pinned down on the bed. He moved to sat on my hips, captured my wrists in one hand pressing them against my belly and pushed with the other one against my sternum. The scream in my throat petrified. I opened my eyes. I wanted to see what was coming, seeing was the only thing left to my will.

‘Hey, whoa.’

I tried to focus my vision. I trembled uncontrollably under his weight on my hips.

‘Hey, come on, slow down. You’re only gonna hurt yourself.’

He sounded so nice, so deceiving. Like when he had talked to me in that cell, kindly, that one time, long ago. So long ago. He had sounded regretful but he had returned a few days later and nothing had changed. I begun to cry. 

‘Hey, hey. Come on. Look at me.’

I looked up. It was him. I whimpered. 

‘Sh, don’t –.’ That sent me into another hopeless struggle to free myself. He put a bit more pressure on my chest, but relieved it the instant I stopped fighting him. ‘There you go. Is all right. Look at me.’

I kept on quivering but eventually looked at him again. He had brown eyes, deep auburn ones. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t anymore. He lifted his hand off my chest and begun to stroke my hair again. I couldn’t fathom why. Why would he touch me so gently only to do what he was about to do? The shaking changed into a frozen tension. I kept on looking into his eyes. I wanted to see what was coming. As long as his hands were grabbing my wrists and stroking my hair they could not move down onto his belt.

‘See, it’s all right.’ I saw him smile at me. It was scary. He pulled his hand way from my hair.

‘I’m gonna let go and stand up now, okay?’ I kept on looking at him. What was this? ‘Do you hear me? I’m gonna let go and stand up. You just stay there. Right there, all right?’ I took a look around. ‘Are we clear on this?’ he demanded. I nodded.

He opened, slowly, his fingers around my wrists and backed away with slow, relaxed movements. I escaped the other way, up against the headboard as soon as he was off of me. He put his hands out, palms towards me reassuringly as he withdrew on his knees towards the feet of the bed.

‘Whoa, it’s all right. Nothin’s gonna happen here.’ 

I caught my breath and the world begun to clear up. Something was not right. I had my clothes on, my own clothes. I looked up, confused, at the man. ‘Logan?’ He didn’t say anything, just got off the bed. I looked down. It was a bed I was on, not a stone floor. Around me was a small one room apartment. Daylight crept in through the half closed blinds. I had my trousers on. And my shirt. I let myself exhale. 

‘Grace, Grainne, how are you doin’ there?’

I smiled weakly, but only glanced at him. I was so afraid. Of him. So I lied to the best I could hoping that the smell of fear would cover the dishonesty. ‘It’s okay. I’m getting there.’

‘You had a nightmare. Bad one.’

I let out a nervous chuckle: ‘Aye. A bad one.’ I took another look around the room making sure I really was where I was. The door was too far away.

‘What was is about?’

I shuddered. ‘It’s nothing. A weird dream. Something that happened a long, long time ago.’ Logan grunted as if agreeing.

He smiled crookedly. ‘Got those too. I’m gonna sit in that chair again, if it’s okay with you.’

I nodded and tried not to pull away from him when he got closer to me.

‘Just gonna sit here.’ He turned the chair so that he wouldn’t face me directly but in a slight angle. I watched him sit down; his proximity made me nervous. He put his legs out, crossed his ankles and folded his arms across his chest.

‘Was it me in your dream?’

I couldn’t keep from adjusting my seat timidly. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘The look on you face when you saw it was me sitting on you.’ A blunt reply but an honest one. ‘You got more scared when you saw it was me.’

I was scared of him. Terrified.

Had it really been him? Not just in the dream but in real life? He had the build and the appearance in general. ‘I’m not sure,’ I admitted, ‘but I think it was you.’ I looked away, ready to bolt. Couldn’t help it. I wanted somebody to hug the fear away from me.

‘And in the real memory?’ He sounded casual though I knew that for him it was not a casual piece of information but knowledge he craved.  
  
‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know or you’re not sure?’ Somehow he didn’t think that I might not want to tell him.

Had it been him? Who had it been – for those six months? I had almost forgot about those months, hadn’t thought about them in a long while. Could it have been him? ‘I’m not sure,’ I confessed, ‘There is a resemblance.’ An uncomfortable silence followed.

‘Ah,’ was all he said. He avoided my eyes and got up. I twitched. ‘Relax, darlin’. I’m gettin’ us some coffee.’ He sounded indifferent. ‘No tea in this house.’

I pulled myself a bit more together while he busied himself with the coffee maker. I untangled my feet from the bed spread and sat on the edge of the bed. I closed my eyes. _Things of the past belong to the past._ It was ancient history, what had happened to me. I had survived. They had found me and got me out.

I hoped it had not been him. But I wasn’t sure. Memory is a funny thing. You think you would remember such a man. There was something like him in Logan and something like Logan in him. I hoped it was the memory playing tricks on me. 

‘With milk, right?’ 

I looked up and found Logan standing a step or two away from me. I surprised myself by not shying away. ‘Aye, thanks.’ He leaned over and offered me a mug. I had to reach for it and he stepped away as soon as I took a hold of it. The hot mug felt good in my hands. Logan sat down on the chair and took a sip from his mug. I would have preferred black tea, but coffee was better than nothing and it helped to ease the tension.

‘So, what was it about?’ He took a sip and looked up at me from behind the mug’s rim. Not the one to beat around the bush.

And no point in hiding in one: I knew he could smell much of the story on me. ‘I was captured once. Years ago. By – opposing forces.’ The coffee felt so good. I felt how the warm liquid flowed down my throat and along the walls of my stomach. Its heat helped to dissolve the memory of the cell.

‘Where?’

‘In –,’ I wasn’t sure of I should tell him but, what the hell, he would have known whether I lied or not, and besides, it had been a long time ago. ‘In Afghanistan. Late seventies. Just before the Islamic revolution in Iran.’

‘Then it probably wasn’t me.’ There was a hint of relief in the change of his posture.

‘I wasn’t held there, only captured. They transported me out of the country rather soon after they had caught me. Everyone, at least those I saw there, spoke English.’

‘And that was in –?’ He lifted his eyebrow for emphasis.

‘Can’t tell you. It’s classified.’ 

To my relief he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. ‘Fine. What they wanted you for?’

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You were a hostage, right? What did they demand in exchange?’

I snorted dismissively. ‘I wasn’t a hostage. I was a captive or just held in captivity at least.’ The ordinary words used to describe a person locked up in some forsaken dungeon did not quite catch how I would describe the experience. They would have treated me better if I had been a hostage. ‘I wasn’t officially there.’

He nodded. I reckon he had a pretty good idea of what I was talking about. ‘How long?’

‘About six months.’ No reply on that.

  
* * *

_I wonder how long I was held._ Captivity was not the word he would have used to describe his ordeal. Nor imprisonment. There was no word fitting for his experience. Did a lab rat qualify as a prisoner in any meaning of the word?

He studied Grace as she sipped the coffee. Six months was a long time and not a pleasant period by the look of her. The smell of fear hovered about her like cloud of mustard gas and he wondered if she was aware that her hands still shook. She avoided looking directly at him but she clearly kept a keen eye on him. 

_What the hell did happen to her there?_ He could smell some of it on her.

Not quite the wake-up he had had in mind. She had been so peaceful throughout the night – especially in comparison to the previous incident – and when her healing mode had changed into ordinary sleep some two hours ago, he hadn’t thought much of it. He had already been up when the nightmare had begun, but he had not bothered to wake her up before it had got so intense all of a sudden. Then when he had put his hand on her hip to shook her awake, when he had tried to sooth the terror away from her with gentleness that had surprised him, all hell had broken loose. What the fuck had she been dreaming about? 

_Like you don’t already know. _

‘What was the dream about?’

_Can’t you guess, dumb-ass? Don’t you fucking smell it?_

She looked so small there, sitting on the bed’s edge and hugging her hot mug with both of her hands. But he wanted to know, especially if it was about him. 

She put the empty mug down on the floor. ‘Something that happened while I was there.’

‘And what was that?’ He didn’t want to talk about his experiences, but he wanted to know how he fitted this scenario. He thought he had the right to know if he indeed had been there, played some passing part of her personal history. Grace looked as if she was about to bolt again; he almost reached for her hand. He made a small concession: ‘What did they want from you?’

‘I can’t remember. First they asked questions, some at least, but that lasted only for a month or so.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t know why they kept me after that.’

_Alive you mean. Unusual anyhow._ He let her settle down a bit while he finished his mugful. ‘So they didn’t leave you alone after the – questioning?’

‘No.’ She lifted her feet on the bed and hugged herself. Logan remembered how she had looked that night, after the poolside drinking, crying to get into his bed. _No hidden agendas there, bub_, he reminded himself, _Bet she got your DNA that way._ He waited for an answer but she didn’t seem willing to go there. Logan decided to adjust his approach.

‘How do I fit there? If it was me.’ He doubted he had been there. _Why would I have met her? Why would they have let two captives meet?_ It seemed a bit presumptive to assume that they would have happened to be held in a same place.

She said something in a language he did not recognise and begun to rock herself gently. She sighed after a while and glanced at him. ‘They kept me in this lightless small room with stone walls and stone floor. A bit like a cellar but it was warm. And always pitch black when I was alone and I was alone a lot. Except when I was fed and when he – paid a visit.’ 

Logan tried to remain as seemingly neutral as possible. _It wasn’t you. Keep your shit together, bub._

‘He came by every three, four days. I don’t know, it’s real hard to keep track of time there.’ She rubbed her brow. ‘It was real hard. Was.’ 

He waited. 

‘He always came in alone. Others mostly didn’t come in at all, if you don’t count the times I was taken out for a medical. Otherwise it was always him alone.’ She drew in a long breath and closed her eyes. Concentration and determination furrowed her brow. ‘He always came in alone, turned me onto my stomach and –’

‘I get the picture,’ Logan interrupted. He didn’t want to hear it from her lips, he knew already. _Raped._ Every third day. For six months. _And she remembers it, every detail. I have only hazy dreams and nightmares._ He was jealous of her ability to remember. 

_Oh, christ, what if it was me?_ He looked at her directly, trying to remember, but all that made into his mind was the days after she had found him. She had brought those papers back with her, papers where they said he was wanted for a rape. _Maybe it was me?_ He remembered sitting on her on the floor of her cabin and slicing through her shirts in rage, ready to molest her. _I thought she smelled familiar then. Is this why?_

Her voice cut the silence. ‘Could I have another cup of coffee?’

Logan looked at her in surprise. Grace returned his gaze with resolve; some decision had been made without him being aware of it and it rattled his cage to be left out of the loop. He clenched his jaw but scooped up the her mug where it lay on the floor next to her feet. His forearm brushed roughly against her leg accidentally (he really had not meant to) causing her to flinch. It stung him.

_I wanted to make her fear me._

_Mission accomplished._

He went over to the kitchenette and shoved the mug down on the counter. _Be careful with her_, he remind himself, _mistakes like that will push her over the line._ He reached for the coffeepot but changed his mind and opened the cupboard above it instead. He took out a glass, pulled out a bottle from underneath the countertop and returned to the chair. She took the glass he offered and let him pour a hefty measure of whisky for her. She sniffed in the fumes.

‘You want water in it? It’s cask strength, ’ he asked.

She smiled shyly. ‘It’s fine. I’ll survive it.’ He wondered if it really was the booze she meant. He watched her to take first a sip then a steep gulp from the glass. She swallowed, then drew air in through her teeth. ‘Islay,’ she offered with slight surprise.

‘Ardbeg,’ Logan verified and presented the label on the bottle as a guarantee. ‘I like the peat,’ he elaborated. Another weak smile flashed on her face and she raised the glass in salute. Logan seconded with the bottle and drank a mouthful with her. It was a strong tasting liquor, even overpowering with its intense flavours of peat and smoke and an almost obscure hint of sea salt somewhere in the background. He let the fumes from within his mouth reach his nose. The exhausts of the cask strength whisky nearly forced tears from his eyes as the tastes and the odours and the burning overrun his olfactory array suffocating momentarily all other sensations. _Water of life_, he thought and almost bared his teeth as the fumes seared his nose and throat. He might not be able to get drunk but the sensory overload from strong and complex liquor was a high on its own right, a small rapture relieving him, if only for a second, of the mundane. A song started to play in his mind, emerging from some forgotten corner of his mind, and he begun to hum the tune aloud, softly, without meaning to do so.

‘Water of love,’ said Grace silencing him, ‘You have a nicer voice than Knopfler.’

Logan took one more swing from the bottle and patted the cork down without offering her a refill. ‘Is that what it is?’ He took the bottle back to the cupboard. The wordless tune kept on playing in his ears. He picked up an apple and tossed it to Grace as he went to sit in the armchair. Grace caught the apple and bit into it. The tune persisted and he grunted.

‘How did you get out?’

Grace sighed, fell backwards on the bed, and the intensity of the smell of fear in Logan’s nose ebbed. It didn’t disappear, not by any measure. It merely receded and lost some of its sharpness. ‘I was rescued. They took their time but they got me out eventually.’ She munched on the apple for a while. ‘I wish…’ She sat up abruptly and buried her teeth into what was remaining of the apple.

_You wish. No-one came for me._ ‘Are you done?’ he said being suddenly frustrated by her presence. ‘You said yesterday that you needed to talk to me. Aren’t we done yet?’ He wished he had killed her the first night at the cabin. _I should have killed her. Would have saved so much pain._

_But who would then kill me?_

‘No, there’s stuff we still need to talk about,’ she said after a while. Logan looked up and saw that she had turned towards him. ‘The thing is,’ she continued and lifted her right leg on the bed so that she sat half cross-legged, ‘now that we know what you are we want to find out where you come from, who made you.’ She grimaced as he scowled at her words. ‘I’m sorry, meant to say that we want to know where you come from.’

‘Fuck that. Like you said, I didn’t come from somewhere. I was made.’

She remained calm as if she had felt the burning in his blood. ‘We have to find out who made you,’ she repeated, ‘and we have to find out if there’s more – people like you out there.’

A chill run up his spine. ‘More?’

‘Aye, more. It’s really complicated to produce something like you, and since they succeeded, they probably didn’t stop there. The chances are,’ she said staring at him steadily, ‘there are others.’

Now he really felt the cold. ‘Weapons like me?’ 

‘Soldiers like you. Maybe others with different skill sets. That’s something else we need to find out.’

He remembered the dream he had had about the jungle and his hand inside a man’s chest. There had been others in the bush with him, and he was sure it had not been an ordinary, regular, everybody-has-them kind of a dream. He didn’t have ordinary dreams, not the ones that he remembered. If it was true and there were others like him, with his talents and desires, even he could see how that would not do. _They won’t have us runnin’ amok. They’ll be comin’ after us._ He stood up. Grace followed his lead.

‘I ain’t comin’ with you, darlin’, he said hunching his shoulders in rising anger with his legs apart and his weight on the balls of his feet. ‘I ain’t goin’ to be used by you. Not any more.’ He took a step closer and matched his shoulders and chest against hers; she was almost as tall as him. He looked down into her eyes, but he kept his hands at his side, in readiness. ‘_Someone_ might have manufactured me but I ain’t _yours_.’ The last word came out as a growl. ‘And if you, darlin’,’ he whispered as he took a step pressing her backwards, ‘if you get into my way –.’ He took another step and fitted his finger on the soft spot between her collarbones where he had clear access to the arteries supplying her brain. He snarled and finished the sentence: ‘– then I get to lick your blood off my hands, like I promised.’ Somewhere in the back of his mind he was surprised she did not collapse into a shrieking ball of fear when he did that.

She looked down at his finger and hand on her. ‘This is getting ridiculous,’ she said reeking exasperation. (The stench of fear was still there too, but it had lost its edge.) She lifted her hand under his on her chest and twisted his hand away in one smooth movement of her wrist and arm. ‘I thought you wanted to find out who you were and are – Wolverine. Feel free to figure it out all by yourself.’

‘Never asked your help in that, did I,’ he answered scathingly and put his finger back where it had been. He waited for a retaliation and felt a bite of disappointment when she didn’t. _Her eyes are brown_, he realised when she didn’t avert her eyes as he tried to stare her down. She tilted her head back a little and she squinted her eyes in a pensive gesture.

Grace sighed admitting her defeat as her shoulders loosened up. ‘Aye, you never did.’ She turned away from him and picked up her boots from the floor before sitting down on the bed. She put the boots on and begun to lace them up. Logan stared at her in surprise. Was this it? Her whole demeanour had changed and he felt how she withdrew from him. The strange closeness he had had with her was shrivelling up in front of his eyes.

‘I will keep what I promised,’ she said when she had the first boot done. She sat up before continuing to the second and looked at him with a redolent of sadness in her eyes. ‘I will be there when you – need me.’ She reached for her jacket laying next to where her boots had been and took a pen and a black notebook from her pocket and scribbled something on one page which she then tore off and handed to him. ‘Call me on this number or you can just drop in at my place. You remember where the cabin is, don’t you?’ Logan took the paper and nodded. He read the number knowing that he would remember it and stuffed the paper into the pocket of his jeans. Grace had put her jacket on and she was smiling softly, but with a hint of regrets he thought, when he looked back at her. ‘If I’m not at home,’ she said as she bent down to lace up her other boot, ‘get the key from Lou. I’ll tell him to expect you.’ She stood up. ‘The White River Trading Company, the only store in town, remember?’ she explained when she saw him frown.

Logan swallowed. ‘I remember him.’

‘Feel free to wait for me there. Even if its days or weeks. I’ll come up with some story for Lou to explain you staying there.’ She cocked her head slightly to one side as she looked at him. ‘I will keep my promise. No strings attached.’ She fell silent and Logan smelled deeper sadness than what he would have expected. It seemed as if she was about to say something more but she settled for a weak smile and a simple ‘See you then, when the time comes, mo caraid.’

Logan’ eyes followed her as she passed him on her way to the door. Her scent flooded his nose. ‘Hold on,’ he barked as she was about to move beyond his reach. He tried to catch her by the shoulder but his hand landed more on her neck; her hair felt silky under his hingers. To his dismay Grace fell onto her knees like a rag under his touch. Her arms flew up to shield her head and the reek of fright blasted at him like the heat from exploding ordnance. Logan stood dumbstruck by her reaction. The stench of her fear licked his skin and he for a moment all he could do was to watch her cower at his feet. She didn’t emit a single sound, just held herself recoiled on her knees in a partial sitting position, arms around her head, elbows bent forward shielding her face. Her body quivered.

_She’s waitin’ for me to beat her_, he realised to his astonishment, _Where the hell did that come from?_

Logan circled around her and kneeled down. He touched, cautiously, her shoulder. She flinched under his touch and her breath came in shallow pants.

_Not this shit again._

He pulled back a little. _Wait. Bide your time._ He watched her wait a little while longer for the blow that would not come, then her arms relaxed and she exhaled before slowly lowering her guard. But the readiness never left her.

‘What the fuck was that about?’ He was fed up with shit like this but he stayed on his haunches.

‘It was you.’

‘What?’ he asked tiredly and stood up. She didn’t. The smell of fear lingered still like the smell of ozone after rain.

Grace backed away from him before slowly raising up. ‘It was you, there. Your hand –,’ she looked at the hand with which he had tried to grab her shoulder. A shudder run through her. ‘It was you. Your hand on my neck. You used to hold me down with your hand on my neck.’ 

Then he remembered it. How he had held her by her hair. How he had her pinned down under his knee on her back. He remembered the smell of the cell, the smell of her and her scent, and the smell of himself and how he had felt. He took a stumbling step backwards but then steadied himself.

‘Are you sure?’ It didn’t come out as defiantly and self-assuredly as he had intended. 

_What the fuck do you think? Of course it was you. You know what you are. Call the fuckin’ spade a spade and quit foolin’ yourself._

_Like you didn’t know already._

_This is who you are. The real you._

She didn’t reply in words but he saw the repulsion on her face and the readiness to fight or flight in her posture. The mixed odours of fear, confusion, anger and disappointment crept up on him. 

‘I all ready told you what I am, right from the get-go,’ he spat out looking for a defence, for anything to put between them. Rancour, the only reaction he felt available to him, crawled up his arms and he advanced towards her. Grace backed away. ‘You should’ve taken my word for it, darlin’,’ he said, sneering, feeling threatened. It was her own fault. She hadn’t believed him. She circled around the arm chair and he followed. The rage in him pushed his claws out, slowly; he watched her brace herself for the impact. Seeing her raise her hand to ward him off with an open palm as if that would have been a match for him even without the claws, amused him. He sneered first at her, then at the hand, thinking about what he would do next when he realised what it was he was looking at.

_Her hand._

_She cut her hand on my claw._

He halted in mid-step.

_There’s no scar._

He looked at his own hands. He opened his fists; the claws were more than twice as long as his fingers.

_What the fuck are you doin’? You told her she could trust you._ His knees wobbled. _What the fuck did I do to her?_ Part of him wanted to wail out loud.

‘Grace,’ he said aloud. She had a guarded, doubtful expression on her face but she didn’t back away from him, and the scents of fear and anger were spiced with curiosity. There was an openness in her pose and Logan clung onto it. He held his hands out trying to reassure her with his open palms; the claws were still fully extended, protruding from his knuckles.

_What the hell have I done to you? _

‘Grainne.’ He despaired when he notice she begun to move her weight back. ‘No, wait.’ He took a step towards her as he spoke and she didn’t move way. He wanted to say that he had not meant to do what he had done, explain that he had been a meagre pawn in some sick, twisted, perverted game mastered by others but not him. That someone had forced him on her. _That ain’t true._ There hadn’t been someone pulling the strings without or even with him knowing it. He had done what he had done willingly. Free will. A choice. Somebody had asked and he had obliged with pleasure of his own. _You did it ‘cause you loved it_, he told himself; he still remembered the feeling, the pure heat and lust for blood. He felt sick. ‘Love, godallmighty, what I did to –.’

The door of the flat swung open behind his back and he smelled musk – the real thing, not the synthetic substitute. Grace was the first to react before he had even really figured out what was taking place behind him. He saw her look beyond his shoulder, how astonishment took over her expression, her saying ‘Sattar?’ and by then it was too late. A pair of hands gripped his neck and shoulder, then exquisite pain surged into him as he fell to his knees gasping for air. A new wave of pain flooded his nerves every time he even attempted to move. A man came into his field of vision: dark haired, tanned skin, clad in linen-coloured suit and fragranced with musk. The man read Logan’s features, concern furrowing his brow. Logan stared back, tried to glare at the man but the man turned away towards Grace. Pain clamped Logan’s teeth together when tried to speak. A spasm forced his teeth together and split a molar in his lower jaw (His teeth didn’t heal. Broken ones fell out in a day or two when a new one pushed them out.), but he managed to get a word out. ‘Grace?’ came out as a pathetic whimper. 

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Logan heard Grace say. He tried to look up again but the pain the movement caused felt like molten steel and he was forced into staring at the floor. He tasted copper.

‘You missed your check-in call,’ said the man holding Logan in his grip. ‘Sattar called me after he couldn’t reach you. Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ Logan heard her answer but smelled the lie.

‘You’re lying, even I can tell,’ the man replied. ‘What did he do to you?’ Logan could tell by the direction of the voice that the man was looking down at him. Logan tried to yank himself free but only managed to summon up more pain strong enough to make him vomit, most of which landed on his chest and lap.

Grace didn’t answer right away. The two men waited patiently in silence, one maintaining his grip on Logan who heard the other man take a step in Grace’s direction. The silence held on making Logan understand that in spite of her answer the men would know he had done something. He spat out the remains of the puke. The paranoia in him flared.

_It’s a set-up._

_She cut her hand to keep me here until these two fuckers could get here._

_Bitch!_

He let the rage rush through him bathing in its intoxicating refuge. He had the claws out already. All he had to do was to use them, but when he made an attempt at the man holding him he was met with pain reminiscent of the adamantium-bonding in his nightmares. He couldn’t growl; breathing became optional. His heart rate and blood pressure surged as his body tried to cope with the stress. Then a murmur appeared into his heart beat and he saw stars and smelled sulphur in his nose. His body went limp, the panic died away and he begun to drift.

_Maybe I’ll die here._

He heard a woman’s voice near him: ‘What he did or did not do is between me and him, Nick. Let him go.’

‘He has his claws out. I can take care of him right here. He’s not worth the risks, Grace.’ Logan smelled the bottled up anger, concern, and underlying jealousy as he stared at the man’s shoes. Then the world turned dark but he could still hear Grace and the man, Nick, argue over him.

‘He’s mine, Nick,’ Grace’s voice said warning the man.

_No, I ain’t._

‘You’re not bound by the Code to him anymore, Grace. If he caused harm to you, you’re not bound to him.’ 

_What the hell does that mean?_

‘I still claim him, and it’s my call anyhow, not yours or anyone else’s. And he can’t retract the claws when you are holding him down. He can’t even breathe. Just look at him.’ She sounded angrier than ever before. 

‘Nick,’ the musk-scented man said with a low, soft voice, ‘she is right. It is her call and he is hers to claim. Especially because of – whatever happened between them two. Let him go.’

‘You got to be kidding me, Sattar. Don’t encourage her. This idiocy has lasted long enough.’

‘No. It is very likely that we will need his help,’ the man called Sattar answered. A long silence followed and Logan managed to draw in a whining breath.

‘Is that what your Talent tells you?’ Nick said eventually.

‘Yes. The probability is high.’ Another silence and another breath. The pain it delivered caused Logan’s heart to miss its rhythm.

‘He’s arrhythmic.’ _Grace._ ‘Let him go. Now.’

_Grace. _

_No._

_I had it commin’._

The pain dissolved and he could breathe properly again. The claws retracted on their own making his overstrained body twitch at the pain. Someone took his hand and familiar warmth radiated into him. 

‘Grace, this is not a smart move.’ That Nick fellow again. Logan realised that he was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall under the window; he felt the cool air leaking in on his neck. It was Grace holding his hand and he felt her consciousness move in him fixing the damage with his ability to heal. It occurred to him that if he really was a weapon, a manufactured tool, then they probably was a name for his ability to heal himself absurdly quickly. _A production code. Or a feature. It’s gotta have a name in a list._ Grace pulled out and he felt colder, but his heart had got its beat back.

‘Logan, can you hear me?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, I hear you but you look a bit blurry.’ He could barely see enough to catch her smile smelling relieved. _Why?_ He wanted to touch her face. He lifted his right hand but a heavy boot came down on it before it got off the floor.

‘You keep your hands to yourself.’ Logan felt dizzy as he lifted his chin to see the speaker. The tall, burly man gazed calmly down at him. Logan recognised the leather jacket and remembered seeing the man outside the cafe with Grace. Logan answered with polite ‘fuck you’ and a growl. ‘Watch it,’ the man warned.

Grace’s hand came down on Logan shoulder and he turned his head, still groggy, to her. His sight was clearing up. Grace had a concerned look in her eyes and he touched her neck below her ear with his left hand; some of her hair got entangled with his fingers. Then it wasn’t her sitting in front of him but him sitting almost on top of her, with his hand in her hair and the other one loosening up his belt. She didn’t have much on, just some disgustingly filthy rags for clothes, and her thighs and hips were in full view and covered in bruises. He knew it had been him who had put them there. He felt his hand unbutton the fly of his camouflaged fatigues and reminded himself to take care with his hold on her as intense arousal sometimes caused his claws to extend involuntarily. He had been told off for cutting her too badly. They wanted her intact, reasonably intact. She needed to stay fit enough._ For what?_

He heard her say something he didn’t quite catch. He blinked, shook his head and saw the present version of her again. His fingers were clenching her neck with his thump buried painfully under her jaw. She was holding his wrist trying to gently but firmly make him let go. He unclenched his grip and she let him go.

_You knew what I am._

Logan yanked his right hand free making Nick stumble and leaving some torn-off skin under the sole of the man’s boot. Logan stood up, swayed, shook his head and found his senses. He turned his back deliberately to the two men trying to signal his contempt and dominance through the indifference of the gesture. He knew it was a useless, sad performance with the vomit stains on his clothes and the fact that he had to keep from stumbling as he turned. Logan kept his eyes on Grace but could not make himself to look into her eyes directly. There was a curl of hair falling down across her temple and he nailed his eyes on that.

‘You ain’t bound to me in any way.’ He wanted to add some term of affection to the sentence but failed to come up with any. He almost glanced at the men over his shoulder but managed to stifle the movement into a mere twitch. He forced himself to meet her eyes. ‘You owe me nothin’. He –,’ now Logan shoot a look over his shoulder at the man in leather behind him, ‘Let him kill me, I’ve had it comin’ for a long while,’ Logan continued as he looked back at Grace, ‘but I think it ought to be you.’ He looked away into the distance through her. The presence of the two men behind him felt like weight on his back. _This is it. No further. It ends here._ He felt a surge of relief rise through his legs followed by an unprecedented calmness, a state of surrender. ‘I think it ought to be you,’ he repeated quietly (it was between them two and them two alone). ‘But you can have him do me in. If he can.’

Grace remained silent with her eyes looking at his but not seeing. Logan waited for a while for her judgement but when there seemed to be no reply, he turned around to face the two men. He bit his teeth together to face Nick. ‘You want me dead, right?’ The man nodded. ‘And you can do it too, right now?’ Another nod. Logan didn’t dare to turn towards Grace, not anymore, though he felt her standing close to him and it felt strangely reassuring, safe. ‘All right,’ he said looking straight at Nick as he knelt down: it would be easier for them all if he was already on hid knees. ‘Do it. Now. She deserves to see it.’

He felt light-hearted, literally. _It’s all over now. All this crap. No farewells and long goodbyes. This is it_. 

‘Get out, you two.’ It was Grace from behind him. Her voice was calm and quiet but without room for argument. The men held their ground a moment longer, then Sattar nudged Nick by the arm and the man relented. Logan remained on his knees as the men walked out. He heard the door close.

‘Get up,’ she commanded and he followed her order.

‘It’s good that it’s you,’ he said when she came to stand in front of her. ‘Can you do it without the sword? I might fight back if you try to do it by –,’ he searched for the term, ‘delvin’ in me. I wouldn’t mean to, but still might.’

‘I don’t want you dead.’

It was a slap in his face. ‘Why the fuck not?’ _Why wouldn’t you? Who wouldn’t?_

Something rippled in her, he could sense it. ‘Your death is your own, like I said.’

‘And I give it to you,’ _love_ he added but didn’t say it out loud. ‘You know what I am. And what I did to you. Willingly,’ he added though without wanting to, ‘I raped you over and over again ‘cause I wanted to. Somebody asked me to and I was happy to comply.’ There was no escaping that anymore, he knew it._ At least I can own to that, if nothin’ else._

‘It wasn’t you.’

He laughed with scorn towards himself. ‘Oh, it was me, darlin’, believe me.’ Images of the memory flooded his eyes. ‘It was me, have no doubt. I remember what I did.’

‘I know it was you.’ A shiver run through her and she turned slightly away from him for a moment. ‘Sattar is right, you know, the two of us are in this together. We can’t escape this if we are to survive this.’ (Logan wasn’t sure what she meant by ‘this’ but he assumed she wasn’t talking about them two.) ‘And I don’t want you dead, not for me.’

He laughed again. ‘And why not?’

‘You’re not that man anymore.’

Logan snorted. ‘Right.’

‘You have changed.’

‘And you would know.’

Grace laid a gentle hand on his forearm. ‘I’m really afraid of you now, you know. I know you can smell it. I said I wouldn’t be but I am.’ He knew she wasn’t lying. The smell of fear had never left her since she woke up and her hand trembled slightly. ‘But you’re not the same man anymore. There’s something profoundly different in you. Something has changed.’

‘How?’ Her touch felt warm on his arm, warm and gentle. He wanted to remove her hand but he didn’t dare to touch her. 

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘It’s the amnesia, I think. The process of applying adamantium is such a shock that it is not unheard of for the subjects to suffer extensive mental side effects. Without the genetic material that was used to – make you, you wouldn’t have even survived. Even if your body could have taken it.’ She pulled her hand away and let her gaze drop down. ‘No-one comes out as the same person that went in. One changes. Sometimes for the worse.’

‘And I’m supposedly better off. Why?’

‘Damage to the brain can cause a dramatic change in personality as brain tissue containing personality traits and key memories is lost. And you have had some serious damage done during the adamantium bonding. Your healing factor restored most of the lost tissue but some information unavoidably gets lost and in your case, most of it was concerned with your personal memories and psyche.’

_Healing factor. So you do have a name for it._ ‘Memories make us into who we are,’ he offered.

‘That’s right, to a certain extent, and without them you have a certain freedom.’

Certain freedom, but not absolute. ‘I did rape you. Who knows what else I have done.’ He did have an idea through his dreams. ‘I still – like violence.’ No point in denying the facts. He loved to cause pain, he loved the power he had over other people. It was a source of security, if nothing else. And he was remarkably good at it. Skilled, even articulated in his own way. It came out instinctually, the skill to fight and maim, without him needing to actively think ahead and that was a sign of significant competence, of professionalism, a proof of his mastery. He merely decided what he wanted to accomplish and his body did the rest.

‘Do you regret it?’ she asked tentatively.

He didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes,’ but it was a mixed feeling. He was truly sorry it had been her, and yet it felt at odds with the pride he took in his might and skill. _I just wish it hadn’t been you._ ‘Now what?’

Grace looked around thinking. ‘I’ll go home with the lads. We’ll keep an eye on you but only if it’s okay with you and from the distance. We really need to find out who’s behind this.’

‘Fine by me. Do I need to call you or what?’ He felt obliged to accept the terms – for her sake but for no-one else.

Grace smiled. ‘Not unless you feel the need. Use that number I gave you. You won’t see us but we’ll be there. We’ll let you know it anything pops out of the woodwork.’ She begun to button up her jacket, ready to leave. Unthinking Logan squeezed her arm gently by the elbow. She froze and he jerked his hand back. 

‘Meant nothing by it,’ he said being unable to apologise. She rubbed the arm where he had touched him without a reply. 

_Shit. She’s lost to me._

_Managed to fuck that up too. Whatever that was._

Logan watched her button up the remaining buttons. He remembered the vomit on his shirt as its stink finally registered in his mind. He pulled the shirt carefully off and tossed it past her on the arm chair. 

‘Well, I need to get going. They’re waiting for me.’ She didn’t look at him directly but somewhere past his left arm. ‘Someone will contact you if there’s need.’

_Fuck that. You’re mine._

Logan grabbed her by her shoulders and jerked her to him. He wrapped his arms around her, tightly, before she had a change to react, and he felt how her entire body turned rigid. They stood there motionless for few seconds, him breathing slowly with long breaths trying to keep his calm. It was scary to have her so close to him and in such a manner. Not because what it meant for her, but because he didn’t completely trust himself to behave accordingly. The memory of her scent under him lingered in his mind, tempting the arousal her presence fed in him. The memories of the cell were still fresh in his mind, too vivid, too infested with emotions and intent.

_You ain’t goin’ anywhere just yet_. 

Logan he lifted his hand to her neck and guided her head to rest against his shoulder. He left his hand there entangled in her hair. It felt strange to hold her like that. He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent. ‘Grace,’ he said softly as he breathed out. The image changed. Now they were back in the cell, him grabbing her hair and humping her from behind. He felt her tremble under him. 

His voice set off something in her. Grace lashed out, tried to force his arms open, and when that failed she tried slip through them as she let her legs go limp. It wasn’t a fair fight. She was strong but not strong enough, and it was easy for him to maintain his hold. Logan simply tightened his hug depriving her of room to fight efficiently. That didn’t keep her from trying. She managed to sink her teeth into his left pectoral muscle and she bit hard, hard enough to cut through the skin and into the muscle itself.

Logan growled. He lifted Grace off of her feet, leaned back, let them both fall down with her on top. Once down he rolled over taking her with and underneath him. Her fight turned into a frantic struggle as the stench of her fear washed over them. Logan didn’t mind. He wrapped his legs around her hips to lie legs astride on her and lifted his ankles over her knees to keep her from kicking. He let his full weight descent on her. That triggered something else in her and she turned limp, utterly flaccid. He could feel her heart racing against the muscles on his sternum. Her hip was pressing against his groin and he sunk his face into her hair.

He came to his senses when he realised he was pulling her by the hair. He relaxed his grip instantly. ‘I have to do this,’ he whispered into her ear. She begun to quiver and it made him stroke her hair. ‘Is all right,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to fear me. Don’t allow yourself to fear me.’ _You’re useless to me if you fear me._ He hoisted her up into a sitting position, moved his knees between her thighs and lifted her up into his lap. She was shaking now, uncontrollably, sounding as she was about to hyperventilate. Logan considered carrying her onto the bed and stood half way up but abandoned the thought. It would probably be too much for her. He sunk back onto his knees instead. Grace whimpered as they moved down. ‘Is all right,’ he repeated, ‘Nothin’s gonna happen,‘ but she either didn’t comprehend it or she took it to mean the opposite. 

It felt good to have her like this, against him, with him holding her, he realised. It felt good. She begun to cry voicelessly. The smell of tears summoned up a memory in him. He was staring down at her on the stone floor. She had very little on her, some rags and a skimpy thin grey woollen blanket. He saw himself pull it way and how he shoved her over to her stomach with his boot. She was limp, no resistance what so ever left in her, and he knelt down with his knee on her back; he knew it hurt. 

He was already aroused when her hair caught his eye. It was matted and dirty but he remember how nice it had been at first when they had opened to door for him for the first time months ago. Logan saw himself reach out and pull the hair away from her face. She was good looking, had been good looking too. All gone now, replaced with blank eyes and cheeks swollen up by his hand.

He had felt sorry for her then, he remembered to his surprise, genuinely sorry. She hadn’t deserved it. They had said she was like him, that she could heal in a similar manner, but it hadn’t been as fast as his; he could see the bruises his hands had made on her three days earlier. He touched her cheek gently, trying to be gentle, but he saw the shiver his touch caused. 

It was all too late by then. He supposed he could have done it differently, if he had wanted to, right from the start. He could have been gentler, caring even, but it was what it was now. And besides, they had let him believe she could take it. Whoever they were.

He had said something to her then, before moving to fuck her again. He had said something and she had come back alive for a moment. What had it been?

_Let’s get this over with._

‘One time, back there,’ he whispered to her hair as she whimpered in his hold, ‘I saw you, I saw what I had done to you.’ He knew she had heard him. She was quiet again in his arms but the tense energy was still there as was the reek of terror. ‘It could’ve been done differently but it would’ve been done anyhow. I took the offer but there would’ve have been somebody else to take it if I hadn’t.’ He said it more for his sake than for hers. ‘I could have been more – careful.’ It was only a matter of skill, he knew it. He could have done it differently if he had been more calculating but he had let himself loose on her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered without meaning to. She begun to quiver and it made him stroke her hair. ‘Is all right,’ he said. ‘I ain’t gonna do nothin’.’ Grace started to struggle against him again. She managed to get her hands between them and tried to push herself free. Her legs were free to kick as she sat in his lap with him between her legs and she used them too push upwards and away forcing Logan to use more force than he wanted to in order to keep her from escaping. He leaned to his right falling again to the floor and on top of her. 

‘Grace, listen to me.’ Grace’s head slammed into his nose as she struggled under him. Logan heard how the cartilage in his nose cracked and for a few seconds blood spilled out and onto her face. Logan cursed and barked at her to keep still. Grace went limp again. Logan leaned his forehead on hers. _Shit._ It took few breaths to cool him down. _Get a grip, fuckwit_, he told himself. ‘Listen to me, love. You remember when you found me, right? How I tried to scare you but you would not be scared?’ Grace didn’t reply and Logan lifted his head to look at her. She had her eyes shut tightly and her mouth was a thin, thin line. ‘I need you to be that same fuckin’ brave again, okay? That same fighter that feared nothin’, remember?’ She remained unresponsive but the lines around her eyes softened ever so lightly. Logan waited for a moment, then pulled his left hand from underneath her and leaned his forearm on the floor above her shoulder taking some weight off of her. Grace drew in a ragged breath. Logan drew his right arm free too. ‘You get what I’m sayin’?’

Grace remained silent. Logan studied her features for a while before gathering her arms onto her chest and lifting her up into a sitting positions again. He kept her closed in his arms. ‘It’s alright, love. Grainne,’ he corrected, ‘I ain’t gonna do nothin’ to you now. You just need to let go of the fear.’ He felt his own spine quiver and he realised he was afraid too, afraid of himself, of things that lay deep within him. _This is all my fault._ He looked at Grace’s head, pressed against his shoulder, face way from him and her torso tensing, fighting against his hold. He leaned his cheek against the back of her head. ‘You can’t allow yourself to fear.’ He closed his eyes and concentrated. ‘You must not fear. Fear is a mind-killer.’ He realised he was reciting something he had read years and years ago. ‘Without fear you die only once.’ He knew they both already knew this through experience. He adjusted his hold and her fear surged again. ‘Let it come, Grace, let it pass through you. Let it come, love, let it come. Let it come in full force. We can take it.’_ I can take it. _

She finally screamed then. It was an inhumane, soul obliterating screech that penetrated into his body and through it, slashed agains him, and he had to fight to keep himself from bolting away from her. She seemed to scream forever, again and again, over and over and over. Luckily he had chosen a building where no-one would care or would dare to interfere. He just held her, clung onto her even when her fear begun to cling onto him and his hands started to ache. 

_This is all on me. _

_I wonder how many others there are. How many other lives that I have desolated. _

Logan collected her limbs closer to him. She was still shaking but the shaking came from her muscles as they relaxed and released the fear that had inhabited them for who knows how long. She smelled more sad that scared. 

‘Grace, you want me to let go now?’ He feared it was time to let her go and he loosened his grip. 

Grace pulled her hands free and wrapped them around his torso. ‘Not quite yet.’ Logan didn’t argue. He drew in her scent trying to drown in it. She was warm now. She had been cold at first, but she was warm now and it helped him to relax. He remembered how she had looked the first time he had seen her with her hands cuffed behind her back. She had been so calm. They had wanted him to beat that calmness out off her.

He realised his hands were stroking her back and he stopped. 

‘Don’t,’ she whispered.

‘I didn’t mean to. I know it’s not what you want.’ 

‘Don’t stop. That’s what I meant.’ 

He picked up the motion hesitantly, but when she didn’t seem to mind he relaxed into it. It did feel good. Her back under his touch. They way she leaned into him with her arms around his midsection with her palms open against his bare skin. She sat on his lap with her thigh pressing on his groin. Then she moved to release her arms and begun to pull away in order to stand up.

_I don’t know. Maybe I am yours after all._

Grace pushed away from him and stood up. She still shook a little and her movements were slightly sluggish, languid as if she had just woken from deep sleep. The fear of him was not completely gone, not all of it. Some still persisted under her individual scent but he could live with that.

‘Feel free to pop by,’ she said looking down at him. ‘Anytime. I’ll be there when you need me.’ A cloud of sadness moved across her eyes.‘The sword will be there. That still holds and I’m still bound to you by that request. Your death is your own, Logan.’

Logan stood up. ‘I told you there’s no bonds between us.’ Not in that sense, anyway. ‘You may have the right to take my head, but it ain’t an obligation just because I asked you to.’ 

‘Do you still want me to kill you?’

‘Only because you have the right to take it. Didn’t him, Nick, say that ‘cause I have caused harm to you, that Code-thing doesn’t apply anymore?’

‘It does still apply. He just wants to keep me safe. The sword is there for you, when you want it. I can’t have your death, not for my sake. It’s yours alone.’

Logan gave up. ‘Fine.’ He walked past her to the door. ‘You’d better go. Before they come back up again.’ He put his hand on the knob ready to let her go. She followed him and he opened the door. He blocked her way with his arm across the doorway just as she was about to leave.

‘You really think I have changed?’  
  
Grace considered the question. ‘For sure, no.’ That stung. ‘But you have the chance. It’s all up to you now.’

He did not want to remove the arm to allow her continue on her way out. He glanced at her and saw she was avoiding his eyes. ‘I’ll come by someday. If I feel like it,’ he added as to have an escape hatch. She flashed a crooked smile at him and he let the arm drop.

‘You know where I keep the bottle. Be safe,’ she said before she left.

  
* * *

Logan watched through the window how Grace got into a dark metal green Land Rover where the two men had been waiting for her. She peered at him through the side window before they drove away. 

_I wonder what she meant. _

_Did she wish for me to be safe from harm or that I am safe for others to be around?_


	14. Converging Threads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fights went well in Logan’s opinion. Except for the very last one which the ringmaster had announced unexpectedly. The old man sometimes did that when he thought that there was still money to be made on the displeased, blood thirsty crowd that wanted to see their heroes avenged and the beast known as the Wolverine spitting out his own teeth for a change. Logan didn’t mind. Nothing much to it. Take a few hits, let them think that they’re close to making him bite the dust, and then turn the game around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where my story catches up with the first X-men movie. I won't be rewriting the movie but I will elaborate on some scenes and tell some stuff that happens outside what is seen in the movie.

Logan hung up the phone before the line even had a change to connect. He left his hand on the receiver rubbing the black plastic with his thumb as he tried to decide whether or not he in fact should call her. It had become an uncomfortable ritual to pick up a pay phone and dial the number Grace had given him only to chicken out when he heard it ring at the other end – often sooner. He was _not_ in the habit of calling her, not often, maybe once in every three months, but it had been going on for years. He let the phone go and turned around to face the babel of drunken voices, chinking glasses and some mediocre rock music that tried its hardest to rise above the racket but which only managed to escalate the cacophony. It was a busy night, and good money to be made on the intoxicated punters. 

Logan circled around the worst of the congestion filling up the heart of the large establishment. Some well oiled customers didn’t pick up on the exasperation he exuded and he left a string of cursing and threats in his wake. It was a part of the show to gather enough animosity towards his character amongst the crowd before the evening’s fights. It upped the bets against him and created some hefty ones for him, and though they were usually few and far apart it meant better returns for him and the ringmaster he was working for. It was a pretty standard prizefighting setup they had going. The ringmaster knew about Logan’s mutation and knew how to utilise it without revealing, so far, that ace in their sleeves. He picked up the toughest and the meanest of the willing members of the crowd to fight against Logan thus protecting his other, human fighters from unnecessary risks, and providing the crowds with more brutal and bloodthirsty fights than others in the business could. That was their selling point and it made them good money but it also meant that they had to keep to the less than classy venues of the North American outback. Nevertheless, the money was good. And it was a job with considerable benefits on which the prizefighters capitalised shamelessly.

Logan felt he had found a nice niche for himself to pass the time, but sometimes, and always before a fight, he found himself standing before a pay phone, staring at the dial and thinking about Grace. In those moments the roar of what ever dive he was in turned in to a distant rumble as he thought about her cabin. He thought about the mountains and the smell of the snow and pines in the air, and the quiet, the stillness. And the scent of her. And the scent of dried hay. He always, eventually, dialled up the number, but when the last number was selected and he leaned against the wall with his hand and shielded the phone and the conversation he was not about to have with his body, he remembered the cell and her in it. He never let the phone ring twice and on the rare occasions when he let it ring once she was never fast enough to pick it up. He didn’t know if the number was even legit anymore after such a long time but it was all he had on her. The cabin was absolutely out of bounds for him. He had no business in going there, not after what he had done to her. These days, sometimes, he had dreams about her in that cell and of him there with her. They weren’t nightmares while they lasted (he had other dreams for that), often quite the contrary, but he always felt disgusted after he had woken up and wondered why she had not taken his life in the reckoning he deserved. He hated her for that, then, when he lay woken in his bunk with the sheets wet from his sweat. There was no way he could drive up to that cabin just to see her or to have her scent in his lungs. No way. No question about it.

_Is all gone._

If she ever wanted to find him, she could do it; Logan was sure she had the means to find out where the unanswered calls had come.

Logan kept an eye on the throng he was ploughing through scanning for potential opponents, for big thugs with massive shoulders and an aura of misguided arrogance. He changed his course when he found one, walked right into the sucker’s shoulder spilling his pint all over his chest and bounced back the curses with a filthy gesture. One more fucker going to get what he deserved. The coming satisfaction made Logan grin. It burned in his chest and gut, the warm, reassuring knowledge of success; the sense of power, his dominance, and submission he was about to beat out from the fucker in the blue flannel shirt. It made him growl aloud as his claws and hands itched.

Few times over the years he had managed to notice someone keeping an eye on him in the crowd. Always someone he didn’t know but who always seemed to know him. They never exchanged words but Logan was sure those times he saw them he was meant to do so, that he was allowed to discover that he was still under surveillance as a bate for the bigger fish. Often it annoyed him, sometimes it felt reassuring; he wasn’t as alone as he felt. When he managed to catch one they traded a knowing look and a slight nod recognising that a contact had been made before the tail turned away and disappeared again. Logan never saw the same person twice (and he never saw her). 

Logan reached the dark corner he had been heading for and sat down. It was one of their usual dives, remote though well established in certain blood thirsting, boozing and whoring circles under the main currents of the society. All kinds of people seemed to crawl into places like these: the ones with money and the ones without (the ones providing most of the entertainment, usually, but not always), lumberjacks and Wall Street white collars off the leash, drifters like him and local residents, old friends and packs of buddies, one night stands with complete strangers you never needed to see again. The real world got checked in upon entering but what one found inside was no paradise or fantasy, just something other than what waited at home or on the road. A drug of a sorts, one that swarmed your dulled senses with intoxication extraordinaire that pulled you under with its promises of ecstasy and it’s delivery. People drowned here every night, over and over again, and Logan found his rupture in the intensity of the theirs. He could hunt here though his was forced to let his quarry go.

Logan stared at one of waitresses attending the bar long and hard enough to catch her eye and lifted his forefinger for a beer after he had caught her attention. He, like all the fighters, had a tab that was open within reason. They generated enough business for the patrons to be generous with their beer in return.

The girl that brought to the bottle of beer was dressed in dark jeans and a form-hugging black T-shirt. The bar girls were off limits to the public, untouchable if you wanted to keep having fun in this establishment. Some of the girls did have their share of fun with the fighters after hours but for anyone else they were not available. There had to be some rules, even in a place like this. All anarchy is an illusion.

The girl (Logan hadn’t bothered to learn her name yet) put the bottle down in front of him. ‘There’s someone at the counter asking for you.’

‘Yeah?’ Logan downed a third of the bottle on one go. ‘Who?’

The girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘A woman. Dark hair, tall, kinda good looking but not your usual type.’ She put her hand on her hip. ‘And she ain’t alone.’

_Grace?_ He took another swing. ‘Not my usual type?’ There was a hint of tease in his voice.

The girl laughed. ‘Yeah, everyone here knows your type and she ain’t it. And like I said, she ain’t alone. There’s some hulking piece of a man with her.’ She glanced over her shoulder. Logan smelled swelling lust. ‘Oh well, anyhow, she wanted to know if you were around. We said that we’d let her know if we saw you.’

Logan let the girl wait. Could it be Grace? Usually women came asking for him after the fight but not before it, not unless they were already acquainted with him from an earlier encounter. But apparently this one wasn’t his type and Grace had an uncanny talent when it came to showing up unexpectedly.

‘What is she wearin’?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Clearly not the question the girl had been expecting from him.

‘Her clothes. What are they like’?’

‘Ah, right. Jeans and some kind of a parka. Kinda sexy in a way, if you ask me, with that shirt she’s wearing.’ She smiled coyly. Logan wondered if she was cheering for both teams.

‘An air force jacket?’

‘I dunno. It ain’t blue, if you mean that. It’s black.’

_Gotta be Grace, though._ ‘Bring me the bottle from the barkeep. And a glass.’

‘What about her?’

‘I’ll let you know when you get back here.’

The girl was about to leave when Logan reached for her elbow. ‘How about the man with her?’

The girl thought about it for a moment. ‘Big, like I said. Packs a bunch I’d bet. Light haired. Younger than her.’

_Not that Nick then_, Logan thought. Maybe it wasn’t Grace after all. Maybe the guy was just another fighter looking for a team or wanting to set up something against Logan. The girl got a few paces away but then turned around again.

‘And I think she’s packing.’

Logan nodded and the girl disappeared into the crowd. Logan finished the beer. He rolled the sweating bottle between his hands trying to organise his thoughts.

It probably wasn’t Grace but what if it was? Something like this was bound to take place after such a long time. He knew Grace and her kind (what ever they were) were serious about this genetic engineering shit, and the mutants were everywhere these days. You couldn’t watch the evening news without at least one of the stories dealing with mutants. It made his fighting life more difficult. One day – and that day was bound to be soon – one day real soon someone in the ring or in the crowd would figure out why he always won without a scratch to show and that’ll be it. No more Wolverine, the king of the gage. As soon as the word would spread, no-one would be willing to fight him. Not in the ring that is, but he knew he would get more than his fair share in dark alleys behind the bars. And if Grace and company were right, the ever rising numbers of mutants got something to do with him being engineered.

Logan yawned and stretched his arms. This mystery woman thing was easily solved. He saw the girl was returning with his personal bottle of whisky and he tried to peer through the mass of people between him and the counter hoping to catch a glance of this woman of mystery but the crowd was too thick and constantly shifting. 

The girl put the bottle and the glass down. Logan began to pull the cork off the bottle.

‘Should I tell her where to find you?’

Logan filled the shot glass to the brim. ‘Yeah, why not, but not now. Tell her to wait at the bar. I’ll look her up between the fights.’ The girl said that she would and left. Logan followed her back with his eyes and downed the whisky on one go. The girl disappeared behind the line of customers at the end of the bar. Logan poured a refill and let his gaze wonder about. _I’ll find out who she is whichever way._ The ringmaster and two roadies he had were preparing the ring for the night’s fights. Logan followed how the older roadie checked that all the chain-link panels were secured to the larger frame. A loose corner or a protruding wire could cause serious damage during a fight. Not that it would matter in his case but you couldn’t have punters puncturing their eyes or ripping open their arteries. Not in these fights anyway. There where other venues for that kind of tourneys. He couldn’t take part in those: it was impossible to hide his mutation when you were meant to twist bones and remove earlobes. 

Not that loosing an ear really mattered in his case.

* * *

The first rounds of fighting went by without an incident. The human fighters, four of them, won their matches though one perhaps too easily and one with only luck. Logan’s opponent had been what he usually got: a bully with some shoulders and a very much larger-than-life self-image who thought himself to be invincible. Logan had proven the bastard wrong with a dislocated shoulder and a possibly broken jaw. He had taken his time, played his part feeding the bastard’s confidence and self-flattery before taking him down in a prolonged row of calculated punched that ended with an elegant welt on the chin. It had been a satisfaction. Logan liked that, being an instrument of some kind of justice (he didn’t know nor much care what kind). It was a way of making someone deserving take on some of his pain. And he had plenty to pass around. He had more suckers to beat at the end of the second half. This one had been only the first course, an appetiser to entice the rage of the crowds. There was more to come. More fun to follow.

He rubbed the sweat off but didn’t shower even if it was two hours before the second round. He run his fingers through his hair a couple of times and headed for the bar. He wanted to find out how the mystery bird would react to his smell. And if he would like hers. The thought made him pause on the dressing room’s door as he realised that he did have a type but not of the kind the others thought him to have. It wasn’t based primarily on the looks; it was a scent. He picked up girls whose scent he liked, the looks where – even to his own surprise – not that important. Good looks just compensated for a lacking scent. He snorted at himself as he stepped out.

The bartender pointed towards the far end of the bar with his forefinger when he saw Logan emerge from door leading to the backstage. Logan nodded and lifted up two fingers before pointing at the direction the barkeep had indicated. The sturdy, middle-aged man nodded in return and Logan headed for the end of the long bar. The barkeep caught up with Logan with two glasses of whisky in his hand and Logan trusted the man’s intent to guide him to the woman. The whisky made Logan hesitate for a moment, though: the women that wanted to see him usually tended to prefer some kind of a mixed drink or a straight vodka. Logan sniffed the air hoping to catch a whiff of the woman beforehand but the background stench of the partying crowd drowned all individual scents and he was forced to wait. 

The barkeep reached their destination before Logan who had been forced to take a short detour around a large group of friends arguing loudly but lightheartedly over whose turn to pay it was. He had managed to keep his eye on the barkeep’s greying hair and had seen where he had stopped to lay down the drinks. Logan changed his route and the barkeep waved his hand over the customers’ heads at Logan pointing out the spot. Logan pushed through but stopped on his tracks when he saw her back. It was Grace. He would have known that curve of her back and hips from anywhere. She sat with her back directly towards him, turned away and talking to a man sitting on the barstool next to hers. She had a black oilcloth jacked on her, not the old faded air force blue he had seen her wearing on previous encounters. And the girl had been right: she was carrying a gun under her arm. Logan noticed instantly where the gun and the holster caused the jacket to bulge subtly. 

_Grace. _

Logan hesitated for a moment longer, then advanced with determination and walked right over to her. She didn’t notice him and he saw his hand sink its fingers into her hair and found himself leaning in to smell her almost black tresses. She smelled like she always did: of living earth, something musky and sweet. He let her hair fall down and his hand traveled down her neck, spine and her side before he managed to stop it on her hip preventing it from travelling down on her ass as he circled around her. He felt her back stiffen under his hand. An old pain shoot up his arm making the muscles between his shoulder plate and spine cramp up.

The young man with uncannily blue eyes glanced over at Logan recognising his presence before looking back at Grace questioningly. Logan did not see her reply but the young man got up without a word and with a look that made clear he’d be watching. The man walked past Logan who noted that the man was about his hight and with a musculature similar to his. He turned around to have another look but the man had already disappeared into the crowd.

Logan sat down on the vacant stool. Grace had turned her side towards him and was leaning her elbows against the bar with the glass in her hand. Logan picked up his and remained fully turned towards her. She paid no attention to him for a while, not until Logan turned his head to scan the crowd as he took a swig.

‘He’s a Soldier. A pure-bred Soldier,’ Logan heard her say. She too was looking through the crowd when he turned his eyes back to her. She turned again towards the bar without looking at him. ‘That’s why he looks so much like you. If you noticed.’

Logan took another swing that emptied the glass. ‘Yeah, a spittin’ image. Except for the eyes.’ He put the glass down on the counter and signalled for the girl to refill it. 

‘The eyes are a new thing. They used to have eyes like yours in the auld lang syne but I changed that.’

The girl arrived with his personal bottle and poured a hefty measure in his glass. Logan too turned to sit with his face towards the bar. _You hate my eyes, don’t you, darlin’?_ The thought kindled a sadness he had not expected. ‘You’re buildin’ up an army?’

In the corner of his eye he saw Grace sip her drink. ‘Nae, not as such. It’s just him and a few others. There’s a – a storm brewing and we need to be prepared.’ Grace glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure the young man was still there though unseen. ‘He has adamantium – on him too, you know.’

Logan was not sure what to make of the last remark. Was it to point out that others could take the bonding process but not him? Or that he was not the only one of his kind? Logan scratched the stubble under his jaw. _You fuckin’ moron. He’s her ace in her sleeve against you, you goddam nitwit. You, bub, just met your match._ Logan drained the glass before the full realisation could hit him wholeheartedly and without mercy. _I ain’t on her good books anymore. Don’t think that you ever were_, he warner himself. He didn’t smell any fear on her but he knew that what ever bond he had thought them to have between them was now gone (if it ever had been there in the first place). She had recognised him as her enemy, the source of her personal pain, and even if she was forced by the circumstances to look after him it didn’t mean it had to be – nice.

_You had it comin’, bub. And you deserve nothin’ less._ What ever retribution she had in mind, in a direct or a roundabout way, he deserved it. Logan was more than half expecting that when the day came and whoever was hunting him would catch up with him, there would be a fatal oversight or outright blunder on her watch that would cost his life. _Nothin’ wrong with that,_ he thought while studying her features, _She deserves it and I would get my peace._

‘I’m glad I found you here,’ she said. She had turned to face him.

_Are you?_ Logan thought, _Bet you wouldn’t be here if it was up to you._ ‘What do you want?’

The bluntness seemed to make her back away a bit. ‘I don’t want –. I came to warn you, that’s all.’

Logan flashed a grim smile of self-loathing at the row of bottles on the wall. ‘Yeah, sure, a storm is comin’. And you came to tell me to buy a raincoat.’ The sarcasm didn’t ease the pain in his shoulders.

He heard Grace chuckle. ‘They’re going to rain on your parade, Logan, but I don’t think you need waterproofs for this one. You just need to keep your eyes open. Something is about to begin.’

A wave of paranoia made Logan’s neck tingle. ‘Who is it?’ he asked trying to sound uncaring. 

‘We’re not sure. There has been an increase of – movement in the North American mutant community, so something is definitely going on but we’re yet not sure what exactly.’ She leaned her cheek on her palm and tilted her head towards him. 

‘So how do you know they’re comin’ for me?’

She didn’t look into his eyes but somewhere about his brow. ‘I have no idea how that could have anything to do with you, but Sattar – you remember him, the arab, right?’ Logan grunted an affirmative. ‘Sattar’s saying that something is coming your way and we always take his word for it.’ She looked over her shoulder towards the Soldier. Something in her demeanour betrayed the insecurity she tried to hide from Logan. 

_I ain’t gonna touch you again_, Logan thought more as pledge to himself than as a reassurance to her. ‘I’ll keep my eyes open.’

She looked at him and smiled. It seemed genuine to him. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’ She sat up turning towards him. ‘And we’ll keep an eye on you. I – we want to catch those bastards too.’ 

Logan didn’t know what to say so he drained his drink and stood up. ‘I gotta get ready for the next round.’ He meant to leave without another word but found himself standing in front of her. ‘You gonna stick around and watch?’ Her presence and the closeness of her body felt as warmth in him. He was about to step an inch closer when he sensed the Soldier standing right behind his left shoulder. 

_Where the fuck did you come from? _

‘I don’t think so,’ Grace answered but still smiling. ‘I’ve seen enough price fighting to last me a lifetime. And we need to get going anyway.’ 

Logan felt a sting of disappointment he ignored almost as soon as he felt it. 

‘I think we ought to go, ma’am.’ The Soldier’s deep voice resonated in Logan’s back irritating him; the fucker even sounded a bit like him. He wanted to bark out a dry-witted comment on the blu-eyed boy but failed to deliver. He focused on Grace again. He thought he understood why she would not want to see him fight.

‘Yeah, well,’ he said feeling uncomfortable, ‘I guess you know how it’ll turn out. Probably won’t get my ass kicked.’ He flashed his teeth in something that he intended as a friendly smile. 

‘I’m counting on that,’ she replied sounding amused. Or as if they had in deed shared a private joke. Then she turned somber and met his eyes. ‘You take care of yourself.’

Logan swallowed. ‘Yeah, sure. Takes one of them to take me down,’ he said giving the Soldier a nod. He stared at her for a while. ‘You too, love. Watch your back.’

Grace blinked looking surprised. 

_Sometimes she looks so small._

_That’s me. I made her small. Back then. She didn’t look small when I first saw her but I made sure she’d end up lookin’ like nothin’._

Logan stepped forward ignoring the Soldier following him and cupped her chin and cheek in his right hand. Her muscles turned granite under his touch but he didn’t mind. He brushed her lower lip with his thumb; he remembered doing something similar years ago, in the woods after she had found him, to smudge her cheek with blood as a warning. _I’d take it all back if I could._ The Soldier put his hand on Logan’s shoulder as a warning. Logan ignored the gesture and brushed her hair behind her ear with his left hand. He left the hand there, in her hair, on the back of her head. He smelled her cautiousness and a hint of fear.

_I’m sorry._

He pulled her closer to him and leaned in so that he could sunk his face in her hair. It felt soft on his face and he rubbed his sideburns against her head right behind her ear. The Soldier’s fingers dug into his flesh putting pressure on certain nerves in his shoulder. A person less accustomed to pain would have been brought to his knees but Logan made sure he didn’t even twitch. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered into her ear while holding her head gently. ‘I did mean to hurt you but I could’ve chosen not to. I’m sorry but I can’t take it back.’ He pulled his face away from hers and stroked her hair but the words didn’t have the effect he had hoped for. He let her go and stepped away. She looked bewildered, her hair slightly ruffled where he had nudged her. The Soldier loosened his grip but left his hand on Logan’s shoulder. Logan knew the next time those fingers would leave his left arm useless. For a while.

The Soldier paid no attention to the man he was holding. ‘I think we’d better go now, ma’am. It’s almost 1 a.m. and we have a long drive ahead.’

Grace remained silent, lost in her thoughts and staring at Logan. Logan accepted her scrutiny.

‘Ma’am. We really ought to go, ma’am.’

Grace nodded. ‘Aye, we should.’

‘I’d better get going too,’ Logan said and turned pulling his shoulder free from the Soldier’s grip while shooting his most menacing look at the blue-eyed man. ‘Sure you’re not stayin’, bub? I could make sure there’s your name besides mine on the roster.’ 

To his surprise a glint of amusement flashed in the man’s eyes. ‘Some other time, sir. I’m sure we can arrange something.’

Logan grinned. ‘You just let me know where and when. I’ll always have time for you.’

The Soldier laughed. ‘It’s a date then. We will figure out the details later, sir.’

Logan chuckled and walked away. He couldn’t help liking the Blue Eyes but he didn’t let the banter mislead him into forgetting that he had been talking to a man manufactured especially for dispatching him. Friendly manners had nothing to do with it.

Logan almost took a look over his shoulder to see the two before the throng closed behind him.

_He’ll take care of her. And I have a match to win._

  
* * *

I watched Logan walk thought the mob of drunken punters on his way backstage. The crowd parted like the Red Sea in front of him. People, those that saw him coming, stepped quickly aside to clear room for him. Those who didn’t soon found themselves shoved aside by an indiscriminating bulk of a man who didn’t seem to even notice he had run into someone. The cursing and the threats that followed him fell on dead ears. Though I’m sure nothing escaped him. He was playing the part of the badass thug, building up enough revulsion and animosity to challenge every ned that thought himself the top predator in this neck of the woods. But even more effectively he enticed the most dangerous primal reaction of them all: jealousy, the cousin of resentment and retribution as the eyes of the women he passed followed him. Some discreetly, others – not so much, but all were looks of attraction and desire. I was sure he noticed those too just as I was sure he would take up some of the offers, as sure as every man who saw their women stare at him.

Lust is a heartless bitch. She knocks down empires and turns hearts to ashes.

_Love._ What a strange thing to say to me. And the way he had rubbed his head against mine. Like a dog rubbing its head against its pack mate. It reminded me of the dream I had had ages ago. The one of the warhound. The one I had before I found him in the forest. Was this the barren sunburnt land from where he had come in that dream?

A shudder run through me.

Why hadn’t I recognised him the moment I saw him lying unconscious on the forest floor? I could’ve left him lying there, let the hunger of his body finish him. Why had it taken me so long to remember him? How could I have forgotten him – of all the torturing soulless bastards I have met in my life. He was one of the worst. For some twisted, fucked up reason, I had crossed roads with one of the worst I had ever met, the devil himself.

I followed his departing figure and felt the weight of sadness settle on me. It was strange: why thinking of him made me feel sad? Why not disgusted, enraged, terrified or self-pitying? Or vengeful, spiteful, loathing?

_Had been?_ Had he changed? Had he changed like I had assured him he had? Had he changed, somehow, over the years? Or because of the brain damage and the trauma? He looked exactly like he had back then with his sideburns and permanently ruffled hair that looked like he had ears of an animal. _Beastly, I suppose. The hound, no doubt about it. _

‘Are you alright, ma’am?’ 

‘Aye,’ I turned around towards Pete, ‘He managed to ruffle my feathers a bit but I’m fine.’ I smiled at him to sooth his nerves.

Pete looked unconvinced but changed the subject anyway. ‘So, he is one of us?’

I glanced over my shoulder but Logan had disappeared amongst the crowd. ‘Genetically yes. Mostly at least. For the most part he is a Soldier but somebody has made modifications on the principal genome.’

‘He certainly looks like one of us Soldiers.’ Pete looked thoughtfully over the heads of the crowd behind my back. ‘I can take him down, ma’am, in combat,’ he said and locked eyes with me. ‘I have an idea and I think I know what he has done to you,’ he added quietly. ‘I smelled some of the story on you two.’

I had forgotten how extraordinary their sense of smell was. Even with Logan. It must be a completely different world for them.  
  
‘Don’t.’ It came out snappish. I closed my eyes and gathered my thoughts. ‘Do not kill him unless you absolutely have to, is that clear?’

Pete squinted at me before replying. ‘Yes, ma’am, not unless I absolutely have to.’ 

‘Good.’ I did realise Pete had produced an answer that in effect left the choice to him but I knew he would wait until it would become an absolute necessity. They all were men of their word. They were bred and raised to be that way.

Did that mean that Logan too was a man of his word? He had the DNA but not the education. Not that we knew. He just as well might had been brought up in the way that would have brought into existence the traits and possibilities hidden in his genome; you needed to have the right environment for the genetic traits to manifest themselves, otherwise they would remain dormant for the generation. And every now and again some soldiers turned unpredictable and ferocious up to the point of being unmanageable in spite of the best training possible.

Then again it sometimes was done to them on purpose to mould them into perfect instruments of terror. I have seen Soldiers like that in action. In our ranks and in other’s. A world of pain was needed in creating them and a world of pain followed in their wake.

I combed my hair with my fingers to smooth out the ruffles left by his fingers. I stifled the desire to wipe my face with my cuff as well. ‘Okay, let’s go. He’ll take care of himself and we’ll leave a lookout to notify if anything does come his way.’

Pete grinned. ‘That’ll be interesting.’

I headed for the exit and Pete fell into pace with me extending his arm here and there to clear way for us. We got out and crossed the car park. I waited for Pete to unlock the doors but he leaned his elbow on the roof and studied the facade of the establishment we had exited.

‘Come on, it’s cold out here.’ I had left my cap and mittens in the car and the wind was dragging the warmth out of me. ‘Take a picture, Pete, it’ll last you longer.’

‘Hold on. Did you notice that girl in that green hooded thing there, ma’am, sitting in a corner table close to the exit and trying to be invisible?’

‘Can’t say I did.’ I was sure Pete was right. ‘Nothing escapes you, does it? What about her? I really am freezing my ass off here,’ I added.

Pete grinned at me. ‘Not much.’ He looked back at the entrance. ‘I don’t know. She is a mutant but – I don’t know. Something peculiar about her scent.’ He unlocked and opened the door. ‘Probably nothing. She hasn’t washed properly for a while so it might be just that.’ 

‘Don’t tell me you can tell people’s mutations by their scent?’

Pete laughed. ‘Well, I can’t. All I can tell is that she didn’t have that usual mutation scent.’

We got into the car. I put the mittens on. ‘Sometimes I’m happy I don’t have your sense of smell, Pete.’

‘But most of the time you wish you did, ma’am.’ Pete started the car. ‘You know, you always could ask Oji to do something about it the next time you need to spend time in the tank.’

I laughed. ‘I’m quite happy with the model I have, thank you very much.’

Pete stopped at the junction and looked both ways before turning right and southwards. The bizarrely named small community of Laughlin City was soon left behind us. We drove on in silence.

Pete overtook a lorry. ‘You could find out a lot, ma’am, if you had our sense of smell.’

‘I know. And you’re right, sometimes I do think about getting an upgrade.’ 

Pete didn’t say anything for a mile or two but it was clear he had something on his mind. I was happy to wait; it was a long drive.

‘Like I said, ma’am, I did figure out some of the history between you two, but –’ he threw a quick side long glance at me, ‘– I think I have a better picture of the current situation than you do. With all due respect, ma’am.’ I didn’t respond and Pete shifted his weight. ‘Something you can’t tell without a sense of smell like mine, ma’am.’

I felt discomfited by his remark. It’s damn unnerving to know for certain that the person next to you knows things about yourself that you don’t. Things you might not even want to know. ‘Is that right?’

Pete kept his eyes on the road. Miles passed. I took the mittens off and turned the heating down a bit.

‘He was scared when he came down to see you, Grace,’ Pete said eventually. 

I turned to stare fixedly on the black wall of the boreal forest along the road as if I could see something out there. 

‘And I heard something too.’

Pete slowed down and parked the car on a small lay-by when I didn’t say anything. He left the engine running and turned towards me on his seat. ‘I heard what he whispered to you. I don’t know if he knew I could hear him that easily but if his senses are anything like mine he should have known. Maybe he just didn’t realise,’ Pete offered when I didn’t respond. 

‘Your point being?’

Pete turned away again. ‘What he said, he meant. That’s all. He was being honest with you. He is genuinely sorry but I’m not sure if he actually really regrets what he did. Do you know what I mean by that?’

I swallowed. ‘I’m not sure if I do.’

Pete put the gear on before elaborating: ‘Grace, he is sorry. But I think he is sorry just because he did it to you.’ Pete turned to check if the road was free. ‘In some other case, I not so sure.’ The road was empty and dark and he didn’t take the trouble to switch on the indicator before returning to the road. ‘I watched him fight the first rounds. He doesn’t seem so but he is a damn shrewd combatant, not the berserker he seems on the surface. Every move he makes is calculated but he had to fight to keep himself from finishing off those guys. I noticed few times when he had to redirect a blow as he realised it would do far too much damage or be lethal on contact. And every time he managed to do so.’ Pete paused to rub his eye. ‘But it doesn’t prove that he is lenient, just that he is a master of his craft. Had it been up to him he would have allowed every single one of those blows to land. So he’s in control and ruthless and has a willingness to do harm. Not just readiness.’

I thought about what he had said. ‘Is that what you feel in a fight?’ I assumed he did. He was a Soldier.

Pete held his silence for a moment. ‘Yeah, I do.’ He sounded uncomfortable admitting it. ‘I know it’s not ethically justifiable but it is a – high, I suppose.’ He didn’t sound willing to talk about it so I didn’t push the subject. He wasn’t done yet, though. ‘So I know how he feels. I have done things I wish I had’t had to do because I recognise that on a personal level they are unfair and target an undeserving person. But I don’t regret the deeds themselves. They’re just things that I do, nothing more. Things that I’m good at. Like you’re good at intuitive healing or reconnaissance and in –. It’s just what I do well.’

I knew exactly what he meant. We all had done things over the course of history that had been necessary, the unavoidable evil, I reckon. You can’t make an omelette without breaking the eggs and all that crap. A nice thought but not much of a comfort.

‘So, you don’t think he has changed?’ I asked eventually.

Pete took his time to consider my question and I appreciated it. ‘No, I don’t think people in general can change. Not in their heart of hearts, no.’

My heart sunk._ It’s just the way the world is, unfair._

In the corner of my eye I saw Pete glance at me before continuing: ‘I believe that after a certain age our minds and personalities are set. Certain things become part of us for good and we can’t shake them off anymore. No matter how hard we try. What we are at that point becomes what we will be for the rest of our lives.’

I knew he was right, in my heart of hearts. Unfair, that’s all.

I heard Pete draw a ragged breath. ‘I love the combat and I love to battle. It’s the reason I live for. It’s a cliche to put it like this, I know, but it’s the most alive I ever feel.’ He swallowed. His voice was husky. ‘It’s always in my mind. Even when I’m not thinking about it and I have to be careful with it. It so easy to start to measure everything against it. And when that happens, Grace.’ He drew another breath. ‘I hope the day never comes, but I fear it will.’ I closed my eyes. I knew it would come, eventually. Pete reached over and squeezed my hand in his. ‘I’ll need your help if – when the day comes, Grace.’

I closed his hand between mine. ‘I’ll be there, ready for you.’

Pete sighed leaving his hand between mine for a long while. 

‘Logan hasn’t changed, ma’am,’ Pete said after he had withdrawn his hand. ‘The beast will always be there. Like it is in me. In all of us, for that matter.’ I wasn’t sure if he meant the Soldiers or people at large. ‘The man that tortured you will always exists, somewhere, deep in him. Trust me. It takes one to know one.’

‘You have never harmed me,’ I protested.

Pete laughed ghoulishly. ‘Not you but –. Let’s just say that I’m not unfamiliar with the concept and leave it at that, okay?’

_Grace, you big sumph._ ‘Sure. But you’re a good man, Pete,’ I added.

‘No, I’m not. Nor is he.’ Pete remained quiet for a while. ‘But he tries to be something else than what he knows he is. He’s trying fucking hard to be something he’s not. And it’ll backfire on him.’

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. ‘I know. Wake me up in an hour or so and we’ll switch.’

‘Sure thing. Mind if I turn on the radio?’

I smiled and shook my head.

  
* * *

The fights went well in Logan’s opinion. Except for the very last one which the ringmaster had announced unexpectedly. The old man sometimes did that when he thought that there was still money to be made on the displeased, blood thirsty crowd that wanted to see their heroes avenged and the beast known as the Wolverine spitting out his own teeth for a change. Logan didn’t mind. Nothing much to it. Take a few hits, let them think that they’re close to making him bite the dust, and then turn the game around. Not too soon though. Logan thought that he might have taken the surprise contender down too soon. The guy had been dealing tougher punches than what Logan had expected, hard enough to knock the wind out of the mighty Wolverine when Logan had had his back turned. Stupid mistake, but he had made the fucker pay. 

To be perfectly honest, Logan had been slightly off his game and he knew it. Grace had thrown him off balance (she seemed to have a knack for that too). Her appearance had made him – careless. He had let the rage in him rise too close to the surface. Logan let out a growling sigh. A mistake for an amateur. She had been on his mind throughout the second set of rounds. At first he had just wondered about her reappearance out of the thin air. What was this ‘storm’ she had warned him about? Should he let it, or her, to have a say in his plans (as if he had any)? He had thought about the gun. He hadn’t though she was the type to carry a sidearm, but what the hell did he know. It wasn’t like he had known her that long, just had fucked her once and even then it had been her own –.

_Wrong. Fuckin’ is all you’ve ever done to her. That’s why you think you know her, but you’re wrong. Fuckin’ bastard, you only know how it feels to be inside her._

A wrong thought to have in the middle of a fight night. It had made him think about the cell and her in the wrong way. He had thought about how it had felt to have another person (her to be precise) under his control to do as he pleased. After that he had begun to have flashbacks, first as he watched the other prizefighters beat their opponents. Then during his own fights which was not so much a distraction but a temptation for his rage; It had made him hit too hard a few times.

Then, when what he thought had been the last fight had been over, he had been unable to maintain the curbs on the memories, and suddenly he had been walking through the door to the cell. Grace had been there, lying on the floor, on her back, black and blue from bruises he recognised as his handiwork. He downed a glass of whiskey but it didn’t help to drain the memory, it just made it more intoxicating. He remembered how he used to walk over to her and stare down at her (he saw his own reflection in her eyes). A wave of lust caught him and he didn’t hear the ringmaster announce the one last contestant, their saviour, and he didn’t see the first blow coming.

It was time to quit and he had told so to the ringmaster. The old man had not been particularly pleased about it, but he too knew that they had taken it as far as it could go without blowing the cover on Logan’s secret talent, as the old man called it. 

Grace had talked about talents.

Old man and Logan had agreed on a break. Logan might return in a year or two, if he wanted to. He had promised the old man he would seriously consider it when the time came. Logan had warned that he probably would not return but the old man had been less pessimistic.

‘You’re the best fighter I’ve ever seen and it’s in you, son. The fight is in you. You’ll be back.’

Logan had smiled and said that that was precisely why he had to go. That it had been a good run, lot’s of fun, and the old man had known exactly what he meant by that. So they had shaken hands and Logan had received his winnings for the night. All in all he had enough to last him what was left of the winter. He would take it easy for a while, he would put his feet up, hunt some and just drive around the North. Something else would turn up by the summer.

Logan took his gear to the camper van and returned inside for one or two last beers before leaving the dive for good. The shoulder was giving him trouble and when he reached with his hand to massage it, his fingers found the scar on his neck. It occurred to him that he could cut off the skin where the scar was. He entertained the thought for a while. He could do that. The pain would not be that bad, not in comparison to the total amount of pain he had suffered. And it would perhaps distract his body. He had turned down all offers of sex the night had earned him, and he hadn’t been nice about it. He had pretended that they, the women that came for him, were not even there looking straight through them and walking past them with deaf ears. That had not gone down well with the ladies, and to be honest, he would not have minded some sexual gratification after the fights. Memories about the cell had given him an itch he badly wanted to scratch, but because it was the cell he had been thinking about he didn’t dare to give in to the temptation. He was pretty sure how that would turn out, and by morning there would have been yet another broken figure with his handiwork all over her.

A mistake he would not repeat.

And the scar would stay on as the reminder he badly needed.

Logan walked over to the bar and sat down at the end. The TV was on and the talking heads of the late night, or the not-quite-the-early-morning-yet-news babbled about the current economy as the numbers of the stock exchange run by at the bottom of the screen. A lot of red there. Apparently things were not going well. Logan smiled wryly. When exactly had things gone well?

He paid for the bottle and the barkeep didn’t object. The dive was practically empty. The old man was counting his money with his wife in one table; few customers were sleeping where they had fallen. The quiet made the dive feel almost comfortable after the maddening chaos of a fight night. Logan felt himself relaxing. The tension left behind by the fighting begun to evaporated from his systems. He was happy to leave these circles behind. All the hassle surrounding the fighting had begun to have its toll on him. He was happy to be done with it.

_Little peace and quiet, that’s all I need._

He noticed the girl sitting at the bar when he took his first gulp from the ice cold bottle. She was trying hard not to ogle him. Logan let his eyes run down her figure. A strange creature to be found in a place like this. Young, not even eighteen yet, he suspected. Good looking figure but dressed in a dark green hooded coat that seemed a bit too thin considering the weather outside. She was clearly interested in him though not that experienced in the matters of lust: every time he caught her eyeing him, she quickly turned her head away in embarrassment and stared at anything but him. It made Logan smile. A kind of a sweet thing, to be honest. He considered paying the girl a compliment but did not. He didn’t want to give her any ideas. Tonight was not the night, and he didn’t usually go for girls that young. Not that they could do better, they just needed to have their hearts broken by somebody of their age. They didn’t know how to play the game yet and Logan didn’t want to be their introduction to it.

_Go find your love from somewhere else, darlin’_, he thought. _What ever you’re lookin’ for, it ain’t me._

Meeting Grace again had changed something. He thought how she had smelled when he had come up to her from the behind, and the scent of her hair; her cheek on his palm. The world had turned without him noticing, a new leaf and all that shit. He looked at the girl again but now saw only a sad little creature swimming in strange waters with bigger, crueler fish than she had known to exist. 

_Not your problem_, he reminded himself. _Mind your own business and let her figure it out by herself. You just walk away – Wolverine. You fight your own battles, nobody else’s._

_Wish you make it through, little girl. World’s a big pile of shit and full of men like me._


	15. First Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘What is this place?’ Logan blurted. ‘Where the hell am I?’ he demanded turning towards the bald-headed man.
> 
> ‘Welcome to my school for the gifted, Logan,’ the man answered as he moved around his desk in his wheelchair.

  
A ringtone woke me up, not the phone ringing but the ringtone it was playing. Some other kind of tone would have let me sleep but not this one. It was Pete’s mobile playing the most obnoxious ringtone on the damned northern hemisphere, a theme song from some b-class Spaghetti Western that should never had lit up the silver screen. Not the one from _A Fistful of Dollars_ or any other true classics but from some long forgotten piece of crap. I yawned, did my best to rub the sleep from my eyes and stretched my arms and shoulders as much as the cabin allowed. It was full daylight outside but I still felt downright dopey and decided to doze off until Pete was done with the call. I rested my head against the doorframe and paid no attention to Pete talking over the phone. I tried to let the rumble of the car and the road lull me back to the empire on dreams but that didn’t happen. I didn’t hear the road as such, the car was too quiet. Only the rhythm of the road travelled up the car’s bodywork and resonated in the bones of my head and neck. I wished we could have taken the train. Nothing better than sleeping in a train. 

I woke up to the realisation that Pete had stopped talking. ‘Who was it?’ I asked without bothering to open my eyes.

‘Front desk. Someone came after Logan few hours ago. The X-men intervened before our guys could jump in, and the assailant fled the scene before they had a change to capture or even to follow him.’

I cursed under my breath and managed to shake off most of the sleepiness. ‘How about him?’

Pate changed the lines and overtook an 18 wheeler. ‘The X-men took him with them to New York. Logan was unconscious when they left the scene.’

‘Unconscious?’ I found myself feeling worried for him and it didn’t escape Pete’s sharp senses.

‘I’m sure he’s fine but it is strange. Apparently it wasn’t much of a fight. Just a few blows.’

‘The front desk had no idea who the assailant was?’

Pete shook his head. ‘A mutant, obviously, but I dunno. I have a bad feeling about this.’

‘That’s no moon.’

‘Something like that,’ Pete confirmed without even a hint of laughter in his voice. ‘We’ll take the next exit and head for the border. Nick will be waiting for us at the X-men’s head quarters. He has already talked with that professor Xavier about Logan. Its sounds like they are willing to keep him there at least until he comes around.’

‘Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters,’ I clarified needlessly. ‘You know if Nick warned them about him? He might not like finding himself held in some unfamiliar facility.’ 

Pete chuckled. ‘I’d bet he won’t. Apparently Xavier had been confident they would manage.’

‘I suppose they will. Xavier is a proper telepathic Talent so he won’t have any difficulties holding Logan down if he get’s out of control.’ I sighed and decided I was hungry enough for some breakfast. ‘Do we have anything to eat?’ I asked.

‘Ah,’ said Pete sounding apologetic, ‘I ate the last sandwich an hour ago. There should be one or two granola bars left there, somewhere. I’m not sure. Maybe in the side pocket of my backpack. I thought we’d have time to stop for a proper breakfast,’ he explained defensively.

I reached for his pack and managed to pull it over to my lap. There were two bars in the pocket. ‘Yuck, Apricot.’ I hoisted the pack back. ‘Let’s get across the border first. We have to stop for gas anyhow at some point.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

I munched through the first bar. Apricot has never been my favourite but the bar tasted mainly of syrup and oat meal. Pete’s phone rang again. The front desk called to confirm our route and ETA and Pete was soon off the phone again.

‘Can’t you please, for all the love of god, change your ringtone?’ I pleaded while opening the second bar.

‘Why, when it wakes even you up, ma’am?’

I moaned out loud and sat up properly. ‘I’m serious. It’s enough to drive an enlightened Zen monk round the bend.’

‘It’s a classic. Haven’t you seen _All’Ombra Di Una Colt?_’ he said sounding genuinely Italian and gesturing with his hand for emphasis as if he had been born in Napoli.

I laughed. ‘I love the Spaghetti Westerns as much as you do, Pete, but that theme song is not their greatest moment. It’s no mach to _Fist Full of Dollars_ just because it has whistling in it. It just makes it a bad, sad ripoff, you know.’

Pete threw a bright grin at me. ‘But it does catch one’s ear and that’s what a ringtone is supposed to do.’

‘It tears one’s ears off note by note.’

Pete laughed and I reached for a bottle of water from the back seat. I washed the remains of the syrupy taste from my mouth. ‘I share your bad feeling about this,’ I said as I put the bottle away, ‘He shouldn’t have gone down that easily, no matter what the case. The gage fighting last night was not that bad. He practically sustained no damage at all. And he had plenty of rest between the gage and the assault. Something’s off.’ I yawned and tried to rub the sleep from my eyes. ‘I need tea.’

Pete glanced at me. His sympathetic expression told me that I looked as drowsy as I felt. ‘Go back to sleep. We won’t reach the border for an hour or so. Front desk told that they have a chopper waiting on the U.S. side. It’ll ferry us to New York as soon as we get there. You’ll need the sleep, ma’am.’

‘Why don’t they pick us from here?’

‘Easier to cross the border this way, they said.’

‘We fly across the border all the time!’

Pete shrugged his shoulders. ‘Beats me. They just told that we need to drive across this time.’

I sunk back into the seat and let the sleep flood in. ‘Something’s not right. Something’s afoot and I don’t like it.’

‘It’s a space station,’ I heard Pete quote as the slumber overtook me.

  
* * *

A car and a change of clothes waited us at the end of the chopper ride. Pete changed into a pair of khaki chinos and a pale blue Oxford shirt. He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and looked really preppy in his attire. I made a teasing remark on this, saying he was such a dandy, but Pete merely laughed at it in agreement. We had landed only a twenty minutes drive away from Xavier’s institute and the sunny streets to and through North Salem were quiet. We made good time. Nick was outside Xavier’s school waiting for us when we drove up to the mansion. He matched Pete’s style with a pair of off-white pants and a navy blue polo shirt. Very nautical. I threw a long glance at both of the boys and rolled my eyes. Nick tossed his sunglasses to the front seat of his classic Mustang through the open window and met us half way to the front door. 

‘What?’ he said.

‘Nothing. I just hadn’t realised we have a new dress code.’

Nick flashed an amused grin and adjusted my collar. ‘You wait outside, Pete. Take a discreet look around the grounds. I need you to take the feel of the place. We have all the surveillance but it’s not the same as walking through it,’ Nick instructed.

Pete waved his hand in a casual salute with his palm out as they do in UK. ‘Sure thing, sir. I’ll wait for you outside.’

‘Don’t forget there are telepaths around,’ I warned him.

‘I won’t. Shields are staying up,’ he shot before taking up the path leading past the facade of the mansion and apparently into the gardens. Xavier might be a proper Talent when it came to his mutation but there were ways to keep a telepath from sneaking into you mind. 

‘Xavier won’t intrude into our thoughts,’ Nick said few steps before the front door, ‘He’s old school, through and through.’

‘There are probably others on the grounds.’

Nick glanced over his shoulder towards Pete but he had already disappeared behind the shrubbery. ‘True,’ Nick admitted and turned to his gaze at the door sizing it up from sill to lintel. ‘Let’s play ball,’ he said before reaching for the bell pull to ring the doorbell. He didn’t pull it put right away, however. ‘How was he?’

‘Logan? In good shape. Physically excellent.’

‘Mentally?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Hard to say but he seemed more balanced. The gage fighting has done him good. He is more in control at least.’

Nick pulled the handle and we waited. 

‘I think we’ll find out soon enough,’ he said and stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘Any idea why he was taken down so easily?’

I had time only to shake my head and shrug my shoulders as a white haired woman opened the door for us. She greeted us with a genuinely genial smile. ‘Hi. And welcome,’ she said, ‘We’ve been expecting you. Do come in.’ She had a slight African accent to her voice, something resembling Oji’s Kenyan tones. Nick returned her greeting and she held the door for us as we stepped through into the entrance hall. The building was a true mansion: walls of mahogany panels, chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling, and flower arrangements in antique vases.

‘I’m miss Ororo Munroe, teacher and a member of the X-men,’ the woman said extending her hand towards Nick once we were in. ‘Nice to meet you both,’ she repeated.

Nick shook her hand. ‘Nick Fury, director of SHIELD. It’s my pleasure. This is one of my executive officers, Grace Blair.’

Miss Munroe’s handshake was firm but welcoming. ‘A pleasure to meet you too,’ I said smiling. ‘Quite a place you have here. The gardens look breathtaking.’

Miss Munroe was visibly pleased by my take on the gardens. ‘Thank you. It takes time to maintain the grounds but I do like it. And I have some excellent gardeners helping me.’ She smiled warmly at me before gesturing us to follow her. ‘This way, please. Professor Xavier is waiting for you in his study.’ She led us down a hallway, the one leading leftwards from the foyer, past huge classical paintings of pastoral scenes with cows and sheep and shepherds and billowing clouds. Few students passed us greeting both miss Munroe and us. She knocked on a door halfway away from the foyer and ushered us to enter without waiting for an answer.

I wondered why she even bothered to knock.

Professor Xavier circled around his desk to meet us. He was a bald, older gentleman who would have stood tall, taller than one would think, without the wheelchair. Miss Munroe held back and made her way towards the bay window where she sat down.

‘Mr Fury,’ Xavier called enthusiastically, ‘it is good to see you again!’ he declared while offering his hand to Nick.

Nick replied with zeal equal to the bald man’s: ‘Professor, it has been too long since we last met in person.’ They shook hands and Nick introduced me.

‘Please, call me Grace,’ I said while still holding Xavier’s hand. He had an easy smile, warm and welcoming, but it was a smile of a man who has seen more than his fair share of the world.

‘Grace, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance. Do call me Charles. I am glad that you could accompany us on such sort notice. Director Fury has told that you are the officer in charge of Logan’s case.’

‘That’s right,’ I said as I let his hand go, ‘and I am delighted to meet you at last.’

Xavier – Charles welcomed us to sit down and returned behind his desk. He went right into the business. ‘We have already discussed Logan’s case over the phone with Mr Fury but I would like to hear your view on the matter.’

‘What would you like to know?’ I wasn’t sure what Nick had told him about Logan. 

‘Nick told that you know him.’

I felt uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know about knowing him but I guess it’s true to a certain degree. I have known him for several years now but we haven’t been in contact that often, so I wouldn’t say I know him very well. It might be easier if you told me what you already know. I’m not sure what you and Nick have talked about,’ I added glancing at Nick.

Charles smiled shortly. It did not help my feelings of uneasiness. ‘Very well. That does sound practical. We know of his mutation and of the adamantium on his skeleton. We don’t know how old he is or where he comes from. All we know is that he, Logan or Wolverine, lost his memory some fifteen years ago, most likely while the metal was applied to his bones. We do know he is unpredictable and for that, dangerous, and we know there is someone hunting him.’

‘I can add something to that,’ I replied. ‘He used to be a soldier, but I, nor him, have no idea who he fought with. He was not part of some national, of an official army. He was a specialist of some sort and most likely a member of a mercenary group. He has absolutely no idea who he really is. His oldest memories are from the experiment that left him with the adamantium, just as you suspected, but before that, nothing much.’

‘So we are essentially on the same page,’ Charles concluded. I wondered if he knew there were things I had left out.

Miss Munroe had stood up. ‘You warned us that he would be dangerous once he wakes up and yet you have asked us to include him into our ranks. Surely SHIELD could take him in too? Why ask us to risk our students?’

Charles was about to say something but Nick beat him to the point: ‘You are right, miss Munroe. Logan is dangerous and we did offer to take him off your hands but professor thought that it would be for the best if he stayed with you.’

‘Yes, that is true, Storm,’ Charles said as he turned his wheel chair to face her. ‘He is one of us, after all. He is a dangerous man, dangerous in ways one would not think of, but,’ he continued as he glanced nonchalantly at me before looking at miss Munroe, Storm, again, ‘he would never hurt the children or you for that matter.’

Storm stared into his eyes defiantly but then relented. ‘If you say so, Charles.’ I knew he must had communicated his reasons to her telepathically.

‘How would you know that?’ I demanded, more harshly than I intended.

‘I read his mind after they had brought him in, Grace.’ 

My heart missed a beat. ‘What did you see?’

‘Please, rest assured that I did not invade his privacy more than I had to. I only read what I needed to know to asses his medical state. Sensations, flashes of memories. More states of minds and feelings than clear memories from his past. Most of his memories are gone or are buried so deep into chasms of his mind that I would not dare to reach for them in fear of serious damage. Few things are clear and solid enough to assure me that he will not cause harm to us here, especially to the kids.’

‘And you trust your – skill enough?’ asked Nick.

Charles turned his eyes at him. There was a certainty to his demeanour that I have seen only with a very few people. ‘Yes, I think he is a risk worth taking. And besides, Mr Fury,’ he added, ‘if you are as serious as you say about finding out who put the adamantium in him, I think leaving him with us will serve you better. We can keep him safe and we, and I, can help him to recover at least some of his memories.’

I knew that was what we had planned all along but I also knew we shouldn’t seem too eager to agree to it. After all, we had ways to rip his mind open and read all the memories he still possessed. Even the ones that he could not access himself. That would have been the end of him, of course, and I’d be damned if I let anyone do that to one of the Soldiers under my protection as sanctioned by the Code. ‘He might not want to stay,’ I argued, ‘He is headstrong and he seems to think he is better off on his own.’

Charles smiled. ‘We would never keep him here against his will,’ he said, ‘This is something you need to understand: I will never keep anyone here against their will. If he chooses to leave, he will be free to do so. We all need to make our own choices. I can only promise I will argue for staying with us. Even for joining the X-men.’

I turned to Nick to see what he was thinking. It was his decision after all. He had rested his elbows on the armrests and was rubbing his upper lip against the joints of his fingers looking like the epitome of a man thinking thoroughly a problem at hand. I felt my the corners of my mouth wanting to curve up into a smile: it was all going according to the plan. If Logan agreed to staying on, we would have him in a place we could keep an eye on him. We hadn’t been able to sniff out the enemy partly because Logan had been constantly on the move. Here he would stay relatively stationary. 

Nick laid his hands down and smiled at Charles. ‘You are right, as usual, professor. Logan is a free man, after all. It would be best if he stayed with you, and we certainly cannot take him with us if we want to find out who’s behind all it, but it is up to him. All we ask is that you keep an eye on him in case someone comes after him again. Just be careful and do not hesitate to contact us as soon as something turns up. We will be there for you – with all our resources. One more condition though: I don’t want him to know anything about this conversation nor about us being here today. I think it would be best if he thought we had nothing to do with his arrival here. That way he might be more willing to stay.’

‘Certainly,’ confirmed Charles. Nick stood up and I followed his suit. Charles wheeled from around his desk to bid us farewell. He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Our timing could not be better: he is beginning to regain his consciousness.’ 

Nick left the room while I was still shaking Charles hand. Storm (that name seemed to suit her better than calling him miss Munroe) had opened the door for Nick and had exited with him. I thanked Charles for their troubles, present and future ones, and readied myself to leave.

‘Grace,’ Charles said without letting go of my hand. ‘You don’t need to worry about him. He will be fine with us.’

‘I’m more worried for you than I am for him. He’ll manage. He always does.’

Charles smiled again. There seemed to be an endless reservoir of warm, fatherly smiles inside him. ‘He has changed. He is not the man he used to be.’

I frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Like I said, I did not look deep into his mind, but I did see you in there. You have more history between you two than what you told us,’ he scolded gently. ‘Please, do not worry,’ he said when he saw the look on my face, ‘I know he fears he is still the man he once was, he fears the beast in him, but he has changed – not entirely, no-one ever will – but he has changed. He does have a heart, a large heart, Grace. A good heart.’

I averted my eyes. ‘You know what happened between us?’ I asked quietly.

‘No, not exactly. As I said, I only skimmed the surface of his mind.’

I wanted to sit down but dared not to; I needed to leave and quickly.

‘Grace, I know he hurt you, badly.’ My knees gave up and fell back on the chair. Charles held on to my hands. ‘It is all right know. It’s all in the past,’ he said quietly, ‘Grace, trust me on this: he has a large heart, larger than most people will give him credit for.’

‘I had a dream about him, years ago,’ I explained, ‘I went after him following that dream. I thought he needed my help. That’s why I went. If I had known,’ I inhaled with a ragged breath, ‘if I had known who I’d find in that forest I wouldn’t have gone.’

Charles closed my hands between his. ‘You went because you were needed. Would you do something for me?’

‘What?’

‘Trust me: he has a larger heart than most will know.’

  
* * *

The surgical bed was soft. It moulded around the curvature of his muscles hugging his lower back. The bed was warm from his body heat which told him that he must have been lying there for some time now. It was the bed that saved him from killing the woman when she came about and tried to take a blood sample from him. The bed kept him calm; a steel slab would have had him blow up in full rage. Instead he had remained still when he had come around, in control even if his systems of self-preservation had been screeching under it. Logan had held still with eyes shut, controlling his breathing and making sure all his muscles had remained relaxed and his limbs passive. 

He had remained there for quite a while, listening, smelling, drawing a mental map of the room he was in. He listened to the way the woman’s steps moved around the room, where she sat down, how far it was, how far was the cabinet she opened. His upper body was naked and he followed the way the air moved on his skin, how it moved the hairs on his chest and arms. The fact that room had air conditioning was obvious from its soft humming, but the currents of air carried other messages too: there were no doors or windows open, there were no heat sources (other than him and the woman) in the room, and if anyone would have managed to get close to him without him hearing or smelling it, he would have felt the currents of that someone’s movements on his skin. That split second would have been warning enough.

He was surprised to find out that the woman was alone. It was unwise, stupid, idiotic. _She can’t be alone. There’s gotta be some kind of surveillance here._ He decided that there had to be cameras watching the room and him since they (_Who the fuck can they be? This place doesn’t smell like them._) most likely knew about his mutation they were aware of the risks that came with it. Maybe they had her locked up with him in here? That’s what he would have done to limit the damage and to contain him if he got loose. One nurse was a small cost. Wolverine running around amok was not.

But why was there no restrains on him? They had him just lying on the bed unchecked. That was just asking for trouble. Logan began to enjoy the situation: he would make them pay for their overconfidence. He would capitalise on it abundantly.

_Come on, fuckers. Let’s make a carnage out of it._

He thought it through first, though. He had to have a game plan. He intended to take as many of them down with him as he could. Maybe he would get out alive but he didn’t plan with that in mind. Unless and only unless he was the absolutely last man standing, and that was not how he would prefer it. Then again, to be the second to last man standing sounded much more satisfying; knowing that someone would have to live the rest of his (or her) life with the memories of Wolverine slaughtering everyone else around. He wanted to look into those eyes after they had seen him do what he did best. And he _fully_ intend to let himself loose this time, no self-imposed restrains either, just rage, all of it, every single drop that he had suppressed over the years; all of it, everything he had. He had a good idea about what kind of a person he had been before the memory loss and it wasn’t pretty, but this once, for the one last time, he would be that monster. And he would revel in it.

_The last stand._ He had to suppress the chuckle. _But first I need to get out of this fuckin’ lab._

He let the woman stick a needle into his arm before he jumped up and grabbed her by her throat. He pulled her down with him as he took cover behind the bed. He held onto his grip on her throat, choking her while shielding his body with hers. (Nothing candy-assed about it. Anything goes when it comes to survival. Even kids and grannies. Winning was simply a question of using what you had at hand.) Logan shoved his right hand knuckles against the woman’s ribcage ready to impale her without a second thought after she would have become useless. She dug her fingers into his hand as she fought for air. Logan growled into her red hair. She smelled surprised and shocked but not scared, not scared for her life at least. Logan registered it noting somewhere in his mind the strangeness of her reaction, but he had no time to think about it. All he knew was that no-one had come through the door yet.

_What the fuck is this? _

It had to be a some sort of sick and twisted game. Maybe they wanted to see how he would react, what would he do?

What would he do? Kill the chick? Then what? Storm the door? A steel door? If it was thin enough he could slash through it with his claws in no time at all. Logan sniffed the air. The door wasn’t electrified.

_That could work. _

He grinned. What a way to go! He felt electrified as the old beast was aroused within him. 

_Be prepared, fuckers. Wolverine is coming your way._

He turned around dragging the woman around with him, hunkered down over her forcing her to the ground. He pressed his knuckles a little harder into her side, twisted her head back a little, just enough to see the expression on her face when his claws would cut into her. She was pretty with her long red hair. If he had time maybe –.

Logan remembered the girl – Marie, or Rogue, as she insisted – and realised his plans would not work. He had promised that he would not cause any harm to come to her and this wasn’t it. There was no last stand for him, not this time, not before he had her safe somewhere. Where was she? What had happened to her? He knew the answer to that question all too well and he knew, then, that he had no choice but to get Marie out. One way or the other.

_Alive. Or dead._

_There is mercy in death. Grace._

He abandoned the woman on the floor and leaped at the door. It was open, the goddam door was open, unlocked and there was nobody behind it. Idiotic, pure lunacy, but if he had believed in something other than himself and bad luck, he would have counted his blessings as he slipped out to the corridor. A free pass. Now all he had to do was to find the girl and get her out. 

_Maybe there’s still time._

He knew there wasn’t but all he could do was to play with the cards had been given, use what ever he came across, and kill those who came in his way. He slunk down the corridor with his bare back caressing the sleek steel walls.

_This is what I do best._

_This is what I was manufactured for._

_So be it. _

_I’m commin’ to get you._

_You’re goin’ to get a taste of your own medicine._

He loped down the corridor with his feet bare. He liked being bare footed. It made his movements feel more natural, animalistic, and primal. His senses heightened and he felt sharp. The world slowed down as he became increasingly aware of his surroundings and of his own body in it. 

There was nobody in the corridors. He couldn’t smell anyone. In fact, the most recent scent marks were an hour or so old; the red head had been the last person in the corridor. He couldn’t hear anyone in the closed rooms he passed by and he saw no signs of activity anywhere, not even CCTV cameras in the ceilings. Nothing. He didn’t like that at all. Everything was too clean. The metal-clad corridors were too sterile showing no signs of their occupants. He slowed down. _Somethin’s up. Somethin’ ain’t right in here._ He had to be heading into a some kind of trap but he didn’t have much of a choice. Logan grinned briefly: at least a trap would mean there was one helluva fight waiting him in the end.

The corridor joined a wider one that at one end, at the end to his right, was closed off with a massive round door resembling a door of a vault. To his left the corridor widened to form a kind of a foyer. He headed that way, towards the glass cabinets and found weird-looking black uniforms behind the glass doors. He gave them a quick once-over before peeking into a partly open solid cabinet. There were sweat suits in there and he grabbed a hoodie to cover his naked torso. The air was pleasantly cool and the adrenalin kept him warm, but running around half naked made him too obvious. With the hoodie he might be able to get past unsuspecting eyes if he managed to keep it quiet. 

He was just about to continue along the corridor when he suddenly heard distant voices sounding alarm and the sound of running feet heading his way. He darted towards the corridor leading back to the lab but someone was already there too: his keen ears picked up hushed voices. He planted his feet to the ground with his back against the cool wall.

_Let’s get on with it then, fuckers! _

He clenched his hands into fists and let the claws out.

Suddenly the wall behind him slid aside revealing a tiny room or a closet behind him. He peaked around it quickly, saw nothing at first but then noticed a row of push buttons on the wall. The room was a lift, a seemingly lucky chance of escape, but he hesitated. His paranoia had served him well over the years and this was not gift horse he was willing to ride without checking its teeth first. He pulled back, wavered at the door. Somebody shouted right behind the corner to his left and he knew that he would have to fight his way out if he stayed in the corridors. _Tempting but stupid._ He needed to get off this floor and he jumped inside the lift. The door closed on its own right behind him and the lift headed up before he had a chance to hit the buttons. _Might be automated_, he thought without being able to convince himself. He could tell when he was being herded. 

The lift halted and Logan took position right next to the door with his back against the wall. He slid down along the wall to his haunches and readied himself agains the oncoming assault. If his opponents had any common sense they would open fire at him the moment the door opened. Or slightly before that if they were really clever. A hefty burst of concentrated fire, preferably form heavy assault rifles, with exploding rounds, would slow him down considerably. He might be practically immortal and his body might be able to fix itself with unbelievable speed, but it would be hard to stand up with the muscles on his legs shot to mincemeat and with his guts hanging out. Immortality did not denote indestructibility. Nor vice versa.

The door slid open silently and he waited. Nothing happened. Logan peeped out quickly. Again the corridors were empty. Not a single soul to be seen anywhere. Lot’s of scents though, mixing into each other in a cacophony of a crowd. Many, no, most of the scents were young, some juvenile, some in their puberty. Logan knitted his brows in deep concentration. _What is this place? Where the fuck am I?_ He pulled back inside the lift and took a deep breath. _Right._ He might not know where he was but he knew he couldn’t stay inside the lift any longer. He took another peep out and slunk out into the corridor. Nothing happened._ I don’t like this shit._

He was above the ground now. There were huge windows along and at the end of the corridor, and he could see the gardens outside. He tried two, three windows but they were all locked and he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself by forcing or even smashing one open unless he had to. He kept on going, passing closed doors and solid wood chests of drawers and other pieces of antique furniture with vases of flowers and candelabras on them. The difference between the floors down and above the ground could not have been more striking.

_Where the hell am I? What is this place?_

He reached a corner of the building where the corridor joined with a larger one. This one had paintings, huge canvases hanging along it. Countryside landscapes with billowing clouds and gusts of wind tearing through the trees. Logan slowed his pace. The size of the corridor suggested that it was one leading to an entrance, hopefully to a side entrance. He kept close to the inner wall even when the bright sunlight through the windows lit him up brightly. The outer wall was more shadowy but every time he would move across a window he would have been visible from the outside. He was beginning to think he might have escaped notice. He didn’t foolishly think his escape had gone unnoticed but perhaps, just maybe they didn’t know where exactly in the building he was. If that was the case, he wanted to keep it that way for so long as possible. He needed to find Marie.

Something familiar caught his nose and he stopped dead on his tracks. He was just about to try to figure out what it was when a thunder of foot steps flew past him above his head. An unorganised group of people was hurrying along the corridor above him on the next floor. Logan realised they were heading towards the flight of stairs to his right but before he had time to find a hiding place he heard laughter and running feet heading towards him from behind too. He jumped behind a pillar hoping it was wide enough to hide him. A small group kids run past him.

_Where the fuck is goin’ on? What is this?_

He lost precious seconds staring after the kids and realised he had no time to avoid the larger group now running and jumping down the stairs. Logan leaped over a sofa towards the nearest door and opened it blindly. He sidled in without bothering to check if the room was occupied or not. He closed the door as quickly and quietly as possible and held his breath. The group of young voices scuttled past the door and he turned around to check out the room. There was a bunch of kids sitting in front of a solid oak desk and staring at him. An older bald man sat behind the desk with an absurdly friendly smile on his face.

‘Hello, Logan,’ the man said.

Logan could only stare at him with his mouth open.

‘I think our lesson for today is over, students,’ the man said to the kids, ‘Don’t forget your homework assignment.’ The children closed their books, gathered their things, and walked calmly but quickly past Logan. Logan followed them with his eyes and caught their sidelong, intrigued glances. The last one, a tall, lanky girl forgot his shoulder bag and spun back to grab it hurriedly. Logan watched her jog past him and straight through the door as it if wasn’t there at all. 

‘What is this place?’ Logan blurted. ‘Where the hell am I?’ he demanded turning towards the bald-headed man.

‘Welcome to my school for the gifted, Logan,’ the man answered as he moved around his desk in his wheelchair. 

* * *

Logan kept on watching the kids play basket ball on the other side of the well kept grass clearing. One of them was cheating by teleporting and catching the ball he had just passed himself. The others protested without being truly angry about the boy’s shenanigans. Logan smiled. The kids had it good here. Even he could tell that much. It was, in many ways, a nice place. A bit pompous on the outside but he could still appreciate the aesthetics of the mansion even if he personally would have chosen something different. For many of the kids it was a haven, a heaven even, a dream come true at the least, and Logan could appreciate that. 

‘Give me a few hours to think about it, will ya,’ he said and returned to the bench. Professor Xavier, who had insisted on having Logan call him Charles, sat in his wheelchair next to the bench.

‘Of course. I would not expect you to decide on something like this without considering it carefully,’ the bald man said. ‘but at the same time I have to ask you not to think about it for too long. Events are unfolding as we speak. Events that might catch us by surprise.’

Logan grunted in agreement. ‘They already caught me by surprise.’ He leaned back and squinted in the sun. It was a warm day, especially after the chilly spring days far up in the North. ‘You’ll have my answer by the evening.’

‘Good,’ Charles said cheerfully. ‘Come to see me before dinner. We will talk more then.’ He turned his wheelchair around and started to head back towards the main building. 

‘What about Grace?’ Logan called after him. ‘I smelled her in your office.’

Charles halted his chair and turned around. ‘Yes, she was here earlier today.’ 

Logan swallowed; he thought he could detect a hint of apprehension in the bald man’s voice. ‘Why was she here?’

‘They had someone keeping an eye on you, as I am sure you knew.’

‘Yeah. She did tell me that.’

‘She knew we had brought you here. She wanted to know if you were unharmed.’

Logan laughed nervously. ‘Sure, right. She was worried about me.’

‘She was.’

Logan didn’t have a quick retort in store. He stood up purposefully and walked over to Charles. ‘Who is she?’ he asked.

‘You know as much as me,’ Charles replied, ‘She is a member of the SHIELD, an operational officer to be exact, but that is not what you are asking, is it?’

‘No,’ Logan confessed after a while. He didn’t even know what this shield thing was. He was pretty sure Charles wasn’t telling him everything but he was getting used to secrets and hidden agendas. Logan had learnt that uncovering secrets was in many ways similar to hunting: you just had to wait patiently and opportunities would present themselves. ‘That’s not what I was askin’. I want to know what she is.’

Charles took his time. ‘She is an enigma, I grant you that. There is a connection between you two, that much I know.’

Logan felt his muscles twitch involuntary but was able to compose himself before the reaction to Charles’s words reached surface and became apparent. ‘Really?’ he said instead with arrogance. 

Charles let the matter drop. ‘I must return inside now. There is a call I need to make. We will talk more over dinner.’

‘Sure thing. I’ll let you know what I have decided.’

Charles smiled in return and left. Logan listened to the sound of Charles’s wheelchair moving on along the gravel pathway. The kids had stopped playing and were talking with the red-haired woman Logan had been introduced to earlier, the same he had come close to killing in the infirmary after he had woken up. Jean Gray. _Jeannie._ Logan watched her push a rebelling lock of her long, luscious red hair from her face. She reminded him of someone he had used to know a long, long time ago. Then again, many red heads did but she seemed to be different somehow. _Closer to the original, whoever that might’ve been_, he thought. Jean said something to the kids and left. Logan watched approvingly the way her hips swayed as she walked away, back towards the mansion.

Logan sat down on the bench again and closed his eyes as he leaned back stretching his legs out. He folded his arms over his chest and let his mind wander. The sun had moved and the shade of the tree under which the bench lay now reached over him offering cool protection from the sun. He felt the moisture the hot sunlight was drawing out from the tree. It cooled the bare skin of his arms and face, and the sensation made him smile contently. In his life it was the little things that counted the most.

‘Glad to see you’re enjoying yourself, Logan.’

Logan opened his eyes and lifted his head up. Pete had appeared from nowhere and was standing by the bench with his back turned to sitting Logan. Logan pulled his feet in and sat up. The younger Soldier’s appearance had escaped Logan’s notice and it pissed him off. ‘Yeah. The scenery was exquisite until now.’

Pete snickered at that and sat down right next to Logan. Logan knew the intrusion into his personal space was intentional. ‘So I noticed,’ Pete retorted. ‘I understood she’s already spoken for.’

Logan let the remark slide. He had learned over the years he remembered that things like that were of little consequence. He got what he wanted if he wanted it hard enough. ‘Grace left you to baby sit me.’

Pete grinned but then cut the amusement from his face sharply. ‘No, this is on me alone.’

‘Right. So you decided to make sure I keep my distance.’ Pete said nothing and Logan took that as a sign he had been right. ‘Relax, bub. She has nothin’ to worry about from me. I know she’s off limits.’ _Unlike the red head._ The scar in his neck begun to throb unexpectedly and he rubber it with his fingers. 

‘I’m here to make sure you pay what you owe to her,’ Pete stated nonchalantly. Logan recognised the confidence Blue Eyes had in himself. 

Logan grit his teeth together but agreed: ‘Yeah, and that’s what I intend to do.’

‘By keeping your hands off her? You owe her more than that.’

That stung. _Blue Eyes is right._ ‘True. I offered to let her cut my head off but she declined.’ 

Pete sighed. ‘She had to. She can take no revenge on you. The Code prohibits her from doing that.’ Pete leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. ‘She doesn’t enjoy the same liberties as you and I do. You need to find another way to recompense her.’  
  
‘What the fuck is that, The Code?’ Logan challenged. He turned to face the man Grace had told was of the same genetic stock.

‘She told you we are Soldiers, didn’t she?’

‘Don’t get us mixed up. I’m only a crossbred bastard of a Soldier.’

‘Makes no difference,’ Pete said quietly, ‘We both still fall under her command. We all fall under her command, every Solder on our side and on this rock at least.’

Logan grunted. ‘I don’t give a flyin’ fuck about that. You might but I was never one of you.’

‘Brother, it doesn’t work like that,’ Pete explained with patience. ‘We are genetically linked to each other. We are not just brothers in arms but by genetics. You might count as a half brother but it doesn’t change the fact that you are a member of our family and we all owe her everything we have. And she owes us equally in return. That’s why she cannot take her revenge on you.’

‘She owes me nothin’,’ Logan said tiredly. 

Pete sat up and. ‘Look, it’s a kind of a package deal: we do what she asks us to do. What ever it is, not questions asked. In return she does what ever we need off her.’

Logan squinted disapprovingly. ‘How do you mean what ever we need?’

‘Fuck, you do have a filthy imagination. No, I don’t mean it like that.’ Pete hesitated and thought further about what he meant. ‘Hmm, I suppose it could mean that too but it’s not how it works. She can give us something more important, more desirable. She can give us death in the end. She is our Angel of Death, if you will. She can give us something only very, very few people can and because of that she is – sacred to us. She has to remain undefiled.’

That didn’t simply sting. ‘It’s kinda too late for that,’ Logan pointed out and stood up. The gardens were empty now. His keen hearing did not pick up any other human sounds in their vicinity. He heard Pete stand up too. The younger Soldier came to stand next to Logan.

‘It’s not a question of what somebody does to her but what she does to others.’ Pete remained quiet for a moment. ‘Okay. The thing is, we were bred on purpose, Logan. Not a single gene inside us is accidental. If was, we would’ve never made it this far. We wouldn’t have even been born. We were designed for a particular purpose, to fill a role in the Verse.’

‘Verse?’ Logan interrupted.

‘Universe but never mind about that. All you need to know is that we were designed to be killers, relentless hunters, and the ultimate survivalists. That’s basically all there is to us. She, on the other hand,’ Pete continued as he scratched his jawline under his ear, ‘she was chosen. The skills she has, her Talents, were a natural occurrence. At some point of her earlier life the Regents asked if she would be willing to become a Marshal and she, for what ever reasons, accepted. She was genetically modified after that. Her healing was enhanced for one thing. Nothing major, though. Mostly little things here and there.’

Pete paused and Logan seized the opportunity. ‘So what exactly is she?’

Pete threw a sidelong glance at him. ‘You meant what a Marshal is?’

‘That too.’

‘Marshals are exactly what the word means. They are our commanders. Each Marshal has a contingent of Soldiers under his or her command. The number of Soldiers depends on the campaign. Their authority is absolute and each Soldier answers only to his or her commander. Nobody else. The flip side of the coin is that all Marshals are accountable for the actions of the Soldiers under their command. If we fuck up, it’s on them. So you see, it’s a two way street.’

Logan chewed over Pete’s words. ‘Sounds fucked up. So, what ever she asks you to do, you’d do it without thinkin’?’

‘Sure. That’s what I’m here for.’ Pete didn’t hesitate but Logan sensed the discomfort the man felt.

‘You’d do that even if you disagreed on it?’

‘Yup.’

Logan let the idea sink in. What he had done to Grace he had done simply because someone in charge had asked if he would be willing to. He had agreed without further thought. _Maybe it wasn’t me who agreed to that. Maybe it was the programmin’ in me that agreed._ He wasn’t sure if that had any ethical consequences at all.

Logan sat down again; Pete remained standing and Logan stared at his back. The boy was not as innocent as he looked, quite the contrary, Logan suspected. Blue Eyes had probably done hideous things, things he didn’t like, because a Marshal had commanded it. ‘You’ve done bad things too, son,’ Logan said a bit more mockingly than he had intended to.

Pete turned around. ‘You have no idea,’ he said and sat down. ‘The point is that Grace or any other Marshal has to remain compassionate. The power and force they wield in this Verse is unimaginable. They just cannot be allowed to misuse it, but since they are who they are, they cannot simply be forced into following some arbitrary rules. The rules has to be instilled into them. Their capabilities have to have absolute boundaries and that’s where the Code of Conduct comes in. Every marshal-to-be goes through a training regime that lasts a century. Only a handful of each lot survives. Literally a hand full. Grace once told me that there where 257 disciples who entered the training with her. Only seven made it.’

‘What happened to others?’

‘She didn’t say. There are rumours but nobody outside knows for sure what happens during the training. I think most simply didn’t survive.’ Pete sighed. ‘Anyway, she has to remain compassionate. You don’t want to know what a rogue Marshal without any ethical hinderances can accomplish.’

Logan suspected that there had been cases like that. He knew how absurdly loose his limits where when it came to violence. He had an idea what an army of Soldiers like him would be capable of. ‘I don’t need to guess.’

‘I suppose you don’t.’

‘So in essence you do their dirty work for them.’

‘You could say so, but it stains us. Despite all the breeding and training I’m still a human being. Barely, maybe, but still. Things I have done have left their mark on me. One day it’ll be too much dirt and blood on me. That’s when she’ll come in.’

_Coup de grâce._ ‘It that why you call he Grace?’

Pete chuckled. ‘No, it’s just a name she goes by but it’s fitting. There’s no denying that.’

Logan understood the point; he had already, even if unknowingly, requested that from her. ‘Right, I get that. I still don’t get how she can’t take my life as a payment.’

‘Your life is yours to give but not hers to take. If she kills you for her own personal reasons she does it without compassion. There can be no exceptions.’

To Logan that felt inhumane.’And if she’d do it anyhow?’ Pete didn’t answer. _That serious?_ Logan thought. ‘I guess I need to find another way to settle the score.’

‘Yeah, you do,’ Pete said and stood up. He straightened the hem of his pale blue button-up shirt. ‘Make sure you do.’

‘Or else?’ Logan asked with sneer.

‘She’s been a Marshal for much longer than you can imagine. There are limits to her endurance too.’ Pete looked down at Logan and straight into his eyes. Logan met his stare eye to eye. ‘Don’t pile any more shit on her. You’ve done enough harm.’ Pete said quietly. ‘Think about what she means to you and act accordingly. She might not touch you. I wouldn’t mind.’

Logan blinked and Pete straightened into his full length. Logan thought Pete might have something more to say, some more threats to make, but Pete simply walked away. Logan stared after him with a frown on his face. _This is bullshit. ‘Act accordingly?’_ He leaned back against the bench’s backrest and stretched his feet out again. Logan closed his eyes defiantly. _Why the hell did I say no to her back at her cabin? _

_I would have saved her from so much pain if I had had the balls to die right there and then._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all of the first movie that I'm including into my story. I don't have anything to add to it or to change. So in this universe, my universe, the events of the first movie play out exactly as they do in the film between this chapter and the next. In case you haven't seen the flick you really need to watch it now since I will be referring to it in the following chapters.


	16. Nightfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Logan thought about Alkali Lake on his way back to the borrowed car he was driving. Charles had thought that something might be there, some connection to his forgotten past. Logan hadn’t been too convinced by the bald man’s words. He had said he would visit the place, that he would go and see if being there in person would trigger some memory in his fucked up mind or not, but he hadn’t fully committed to the idea of visiting the obscure lake. But if Grace had gone there then maybe there was something tangible to Charles’ intel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here my story moves to the second movie. Again, I won't rewrite the events pictured in the movie, but I will add to it some background concerning Grace's and Logan's past and their present connection.

_He dreamt of her. _

_He dreamt on himself holding her hair in his hand, and she was lying under him, on her back, facing him. He dreamt the sun on his back was hot, blazing even, and that susurration of the wind in the tall grass in which they lay filled his ears. He had his leg between her thighs and her leg was thrown over his, and their knees interlocked binding them together. He dreamt that he felt her bare ankle rest against his calf and that he smiled as he wound a lock of her hair around his fingers. She smelled divine; the smell of moist earth entangled with the sweet, sweet aroma of the prairie grasses. He sunk his fingers deeper into her hair, cupped the back of her head in his hand and pulled her closer to him. He kissed her under her ear, breathed in her scent and rubbed his cheek against the side of her throat. He moved to kiss her but her hair had fallen over her face. Logan tried to lift it from her, tried to push it aside so that he could see her, but his fingers got twisted in the hair and instead of pushing it aside he wrenched her head sideways._

_ He dreamt he had not meant to do that, that he had never meant to hurt her, but somehow she had turned around under him and her left ear was now pressed against the floor as her head was pinned down by his hand. Her eye was bruised and swollen shut and her hair was no longer like silk between his fingers. He lifted his torso and peered down under his shoulder and along her body. She was naked and filthy, so disgustingly dirty with dark stains covering her bare skin, and he had his fatigues down around his ankles. Somewhere deep under his dreaming mind he wanted to puke._

_Logan wanted to let go of her but his fingers would not open. He bit his teeth together, tried to force his fingers to unlock, but he only managed to push the claws out and they came dangerously close to her skull. He knew he was dreaming but still her dark, foul, revolting locks crawled up his fingers and around his wrist like snakes bitting into his flesh, bleeding him as they bound the two of them together. Sickly yellow froth foamed from the mouths of the snakes, poison that burned on his skin. He felt himself lowering his weight down on her, his full weight that forced the air from her lungs as his face came close to hers._

_‘Don’t,’ he dreamt himself say, ‘You be a good girl and don’ t make me fuck you up any more than I want to.’ Something fell to pieces when he said that, something inside her or inside him, he couldn’t tell which, but something, somewhere fell apart. That much he knew. Something was lost. Something he had known before._

_His fingers let go of her hair (or the hair let go of him) and he knew it was a mistake, the last thing he should do. He tried to get hold of the dream, tried to force his will on it, tried to make it follow another path. It didn’t work. The man he had been then was beyond his will and he couldn’t wake up. Not this time, not like he woke up when he dreamt of the adamantium. In this dream there was no pain in him, no unbearable agony in his bones that would wake him up when his mind could no longer cope with it, and without that he was forced to dream the dream through, to relive._

_He woke up when the dream-him walked through the door of the cell but not before a quick, sly glance over his shoulder at her. She had dark hair now, not red like she had had at first._

* * *  
  


Logan eyed the cabin cautiously. She was in. He could tell it by the recently shovelled snow and by a car parked next to the paddock fence. A huge four-by-four, an old Land Rover maybe. He was too far away to tell if it was a Rover, and besides, he had never been interested in cars enough to learn the makings of different brands. It was huge. It was an off-road car. It had four big wheels and ample ground clearance. There was snow on the bonnet so she hadn’t been out and about with that since yesterday.

Logan cleared his throat. It might turn out to be an okay day: sunshine and a fresh blanket of snow that had fallen during the night. A bit chilly considering the spring was just around the corner, but he liked that. Hot southern weather had never –as far as he knew – been his cup of tea. He preferred the chilly kind, the early autumn, when leaves had turned and you could smell the coming winter in the air. _Spring ain’t that bad either but I kinda like the comin’ of winter._ (It was the sense of sadness that appealed to him.)

The smell of snow reminded him of the first night he had spent under her roof. He had wanted to kill her then and maybe, just maybe he should had. He still didn’t know. What he did know was that that urge to kill had perhaps been his unconsciousness remembering something of their connection. Maybe it had tried to warn him, had tried to make him wipe away tracks that could lead to him. Or to dispose the memories before he could remember them.

_Fuck that._ His desire to kill her had probably had nothing to do with anything else but him being what he was. No matter how hard she had tried to prove otherwise. The things he was good at were not exactly nice and cuddly. There was no white picket fence and a golden retriever puppy waiting him at the end. _A fuckin’ razor wire, that’s what it’ll be._

Logan sighed. He knew he ought to decide soon if he really was going to go and see her. He knew she could see his vehicle from her windows. If she hadn’t noticed him by now, she soon would, and it would make her nervous if he stayed there for much longer. Lurking about was not the way to go about here. 

He took his hands from the steering wheel and stuffed them into the pockets of his leather jacket. To be honest, he wasn’t completely sure why he was here at all. Sure she had said he could stop by anytime but, well, would you do that after what he had learned about himself? Fuck no. He wasn’t on her guest list, he knew that. Nice people say nice things even when they really don’t mean what they say. 

_That’s the trouble with nice people._

Was she nice people?

_Fuck that. Nice has nothin’ to do with this._

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Pete had told he was hers and that she was theirs. Soldiers. Weird shit but after what he had seen with the X-men (Logan couldn’t help smiling at the bunch and their uniforms), lots of weird shit had suddenly become something almost normal; ‘ordinary’ had gained a new meaning in his vocabulary. He thought about the girl, Marie. Now she was weird shit, what a fucked up mutation to have. One helluva weapon, for sure, but how could one live with that kind of disability? He would not be able to cope. He was a contact animal. He needed personal, bodily, intimate contact even if on the other hand he was a happy loner, a lone rider that disappeared into the sunset. (He wondered briefly why the hell it was into the setting sun? You would have to be a particularly dumb fuck to leave a warm bed, a bed warm in more than one way, and a hot meal, and ride into the cold, lonesome, dark night. You leave in the morning. Any sane man would wait until the morning.) But no matter how much of a hermit he was, he did need a dose of intimacy regularly. It was one of the things that kept him from going off the deep end.

One more thing the prizefighting had taught him.

Thoughts of intimacy made him think about the redhead, Jean, and he grinned briefly as he thought about the sight of her getting out of the swimming pool, the water running from her hair and along her back, and those hips and ass swaying as she walked towards the women’s locker room. Logan shook his head. That too was weird, him pining over a woman he could never have. He was not used to that, to a woman refusing him. Maybe that was why she tempted him so much. He had to admit there was a twisted kind of satisfaction to it, to a hunt deemed inherently unfruitful. 

Logan opened his eyes and stared at the roof of the car. The lining was dull grey and blotched in places. 

_I really need to see her,_ he thought as he stared at lining. _Why the fuck do I need to see her? Why the fuck I don’t leave her be?_

He didn’t get it. Or he did get it, why he was concerned about Grace. He owed her. For saving him and for promising him death, but most of all for all the unspeakable shit he had done to her. Marie, the simple fate of meeting her and all that had followed, had made him see that he actually had deserved all the pain and suffering he had experienced. That he had no right to pass it on to someone else, not anymore. The pain – the nightmares and the haunting memories – were his purgatory. That was the price he was meant to pay for being the man he had been and who he still was deep inside. But that was not enough, not by far. The evil he had been, all the evil deeds he remembered or knew he had committed, and all that evil he did not remember but knew had to be there, and all the evil that was still to come – no amount of pain could lustrate his soul from that. Pete was right: he belonged to her now (maybe he had always belonged to her) even if she didn’t know it. Anyhow, he was sure that given a choice she would not have him. 

It wasn’t that simple, though. He loved Marie like a little sister, even like a daughter. He knew something of her loneliness, of the isolation she was forced carry within her, and he knew she knew that. And Marie knew him for what he was, she had survived his claws and seen his dreams, lived through some of them. He owed Marie for that too. Nobody ought to go through that pain. Thankfully only some of his dreams had passed onto Marie when she had used his mutation to cure herself and none of them had been one of the dreams he had of Grace. Nevertheless, the girl knew his true nature and still loved him. They were two of a kind after a fashion and it connected them in ways only a few others could know. 

_‘We few, we happy few.’_

_She knows,_ Logan thought and sought out the living room window with his eyes. He knew her pain too. It was time to take some of that pain back on him where it belonged.

Logan got out of the car and slammed the door shut but something held him still. He leaned his palms against the roof and sunk his head between his shoulders. _Chickenshit. You gutless fuckin’ wimp._ How come he could take a bullet in the belly any time he needed to or stab himself in the chest without much thought, but suddenly he couldn’t handle this shit at all? How hard could it be? What’s the worst thing that could happen? She would throw him out? Separate his head from his shoulders and kill him? Be cold and distant and filled with wrath? He stared at the snowy ground for a while longer and decided that what was most likely to happen was that she simply just would not answer the door and that would be just fine with him.

_You fuckin’ sentimental wimp._

Logan straightened his back and headed for the house though he’d rather had been walking to stand in front of a firing squad. He snorted at the thought and wondered how many times he might had done that and survived. _Now why don’t I remember any shit like that? Why it’s all pain and perversion and nothin’ grand and magnificent? Just guts and no glory at all_. Maybe it just wasn’t in his lot.

Logan dragged his feet through the snow and watched how small piles of snow formed on the toes of his boots. He could take four steps before the piles grew too big and fell off.

_Maybe there really was no glory but just guts and carnage. Maybe that’s all there is and ever was._

There were fresh tire tracks on the snow. Somebody had been there this morning. Logan walked along them trying to keep his eyes off the ground and his head high; she might be watching and he didn’t want to come over as skittish. He forced his shoulders to relax and his legs to carry on as if he owned the land he walked on. In fact, this was his territory, he reminded himself. He had fought, bled and killed on it, engaged his enemy and prevailed on it. It was his, it was his killing ground. 

The thought made him feel taller as he walked between the barn and the four-by-four. The barn door had been left slightly ajar, and the darkness inside stared at and followed him as he walked past. He felt it on his back as he skipped over the few steps right on the verandah; he felt its amorphous, resenting eye bore between his shoulders. The roof extended over him shading him from the rising winter sun and the shade diluted the hoovering darkness a little, but the feeling of being watched never lifted completely. He knocked on the door before the hesitation could turn into doubt that would have stopped his knuckles from reaching the wood. At first he heard nothing from the house and a little voice in the back of his head was ready to pronounce that no-one was in and he could just walk away. Then someone did stride across the living room and opened the door before Logan had a chance to act on the fact that the footsteps he was hearing were not hers.

It was Pete who opened the door looking slightly pleased but not much surprised.

‘I thought you’d never make it.’

Logan stared at the blue-eyed man. ‘What the fuck are you talkin’ about?’

Pete grinned and gestured towards the car with his head. ‘Across the yard. You did take your time, brother.’

Logan said nothing to that.

‘She’s not in.’

‘Right,’ Logan wasn’t sure how to respond. He stood still for a second or two until the uneasiness reached some threshold, then mumbled ‘Never mind,’ and turned around without another word.

‘She’s at the Alkali Lake, left early this morning.’

Logan stopped on his tracks and turned half way around back towards the man at the door. ‘Alkali Lake?’

‘Yup. She went there to check on some – rumours.’ Pete looked thoughtful for a second. ‘She’ll be there all day, somewhere around the dam.’

Logan turned his back at Pete and stared across the yard. Weird coincident: he had intended to pay a visit to the old, abandoned facility on the shores of the Alkali Lake too. Charles had suggested that after he had recovered from touching Marie on top of the Lady Liberty. He turned back to Pete. ‘She won’t mind me showin’ up there?’

Pete didn’t reply immediately. ‘Yes, she will. Don’t take her by surprise. Let her see you coming.’

_Take her._ Logan thought Blue Eyes could have chosen his words more carefully. ‘Yeah, right. I’ll keep that in mind.’

Pete began to the close the door. ‘But I think she’ll know you’re there well before you have located her. Good luck, brother.’ The door closed before Logan had a chance to ask what the younger man had meant.

Logan thought about Alkali Lake on his way back to the borrowed car he was driving. Charles had thought that something might be there, some connection to his forgotten past. Logan hadn’t been too convinced by the bald man’s words. He had said he would visit the place, that he would go and see if being there in person would trigger some memory in his fucked up mind or not, but he hadn’t fully committed to the idea of visiting the obscure lake. Logan walked past the barn doors. He smelled the horses inside and caught a whiff of recently greased leather tack. He growled at himself and pushed past the building onwards to his car. If Grace had gone there then maybe there was something tangible to Charles’ intel.

Local reached the car and found he had locked the doors without realising it. He searched his pockets two times before he found the keys, cursed himself just before finding them and thrusted the key in angrily. Now he had to go there. Previously he had hoped, somewhere in his mind, that she would just reject his visit and he would be free to just disappear into the less travelled northern roads without bothering to check out the Alkali Lake lead. _Fuck the X-men and their ridiculous ideals,_ he had thought, though in reality he had know he would eventually return to see how Marie was holding on.

He started the engine and drove a loop around the yard to turn the car around. Pete appeared at the door and yelled something just as he was passing the house. Logan stopped and opened the window on the passenger’s side. Pete strode across the verandah and stuck a bundle of something through the window and on the vacant seat. 

‘Give that to her. The forecast just changed and there’s some heavy snowing coming our way later today. It’s some extra clothing in case she gets snowed in.’

Logan pushed the bundle closer to the back rest. ‘Sure thing.’ Pete’s head disappeared from the view as he stood up. Logan called after him and Blue Eyes reappeared at the window. ‘What if I don’t find her?’ he asked from Blue Eyes, ‘I probably won’t return this way.’

Pete smiled. ‘I guess you’d better find her then. I’m counting on you here. We can’t just leave her to fend herself against the elements, now can we? And besides, you owe her.’

Logan had nothing to say to that.

‘Right then, Soldier. Off you go.’ Pete drummed the roof of the car with his hands and disappeared into the house before Logan managed to object. He glared at the bundle shortly. _Runnin’ errands now, apparently._ He hammered the clutch down, revved the engine when he had it in gear and speeded unnecessarily down the driveway. _Sneaky fuckin’ bastard_. 

  
* * *

The clouds were hanging low. Logan leaned forward over the steering wheel and peered at the dull grey sky above the road. No sunshine today after all, the sky was completely overcast and it would snow before the day was done. The clouds were plump and seemed to be weighting down the landscape below. Logan sat up again and grunted at no-one in particular. He didn’t need the snow right now, especially the heavy snowing that the clouds heralded. It would cover all tracks, muffle all sounds and swathe scents and smells under it. He reached for the bundle of clothes Pete had trusted him with and made sure it was still there on the passenger seat. He’d better find her soon, before the roads would become impassable and before the nightfall. 

He was almost at the abandoned facility. Still a mile or two to go along the lake and through the dark, thick forest of tall spruces. Logan kept his eyes on the road most of the time; somebody was keeping it open during the winter but that someone had not ploughed it since it had snowed last time. There was densely packed snow and ice below the freshly fallen one, and he had to be careful not to lose the control of the car. The studded tires under his car were too old and too worn out to have a comfortable grip on road conditions like this. A crash, naturally, would not kill him, but he wouldn’t want to lose his transportation here, miles from anywhere. 

And he needed to get to her. 

The first flakes were already drifting down. _I should have taken the snow chains after all._

* * *

It took him another hour to reach the facility by the Alkali Lake. He left the car just inside the main gate of the complex. The heavy duty steel bar doors had been forced open at some point and they had been left bent and twisted with one of them lifted off of its hinges and propped up against its post. Her car was there too, parked behind a thicket of young spruces as if she had meant to hide it from plain sight. Logan peered through the door window on the driver’s side. There was a map on the passenger seat but not much else. He returned to his own car, popped the trunk and put on the down feather winter parka he had bought for the trip. He did like the cold but he had no intention to freeze to death though he wasn’t sure if that could actually happen. It might, being frozen over kind of didn’t leave much room for breathing and a beating heart or regenerating cells, but it would be slow, slow way to go and he had his mind set on a more swift method of losing his mortal coil for good. He took the rucksack that he always had ready with supplies and gear. He double-checked that he had matches and that the axe was firmly secured to the side of the backpack. Sure he could cut firewood with his claws but they were not exactly the most practical tool for that job: the angles were odd. They had been designed for chopping up something completely different. 

He threw the rucksack over his shoulders, adjusted the shoulder straps, and secured the hipbelt tightly so that some of the weight would be carried on his hips and not solely on his shoulders. There were mittens somewhere in the trunk, he was sure he had taken a pair with him. He found them in the pocket of his parka with a knit cap that he pulled on his head and down over his ears. He noticed a plastic bag, pulled it out from under his spare boots, shook it a little in case it had dried mud on it, and stuffed Pete’s bundle into it. He decided to carry it in his hand. It didn’t weigh much and it wouldn’t sit easily on the rucksack. He hated odd bundles and gear dangling half loose, swaying about and messing with his balance if he had to run.

Logan shut the trunk and looked around. It had been snowing for a while now, not yet too heavily but enough to make it unclear how old any tracks would be. He shrug his shoulders, readjusted the shoulder straps and looked for any tracks leading away from her car. It wasn’t too hard. There was only one place where the winter’s worth of Canadian snow had been trampled down. He followed them towards the facility itself, across what had once been a car park and towards the inner entrance to the compound. He kept his ears open for any sounds but the silence was absolute except for the soft, almost inaudible puffs the large snowflakes made as they hit the ground. His own steps sounded alarmingly loud as the tiny snow crystals ground against each other and broke under his feet. It was mesmerising how something so teeny and fragile could produce something so loud. 

_Not all things die quietly in the night. You know that._ Somehow the thought made him grin.

_You old fuckin’ bastard_.

The light was already changing. Everything was turning into blue that in time would deepen into a strangely uniform cobalt hue, into a shadowless tint that would swallow all other colours. Most evenings that would last even an hour or two but not tonight. Logan looked up. The clouds were heavy with snow, _pregnant_ with the stuff as he had seen some writer describe skies like that. No blue hour tonight. The snow fall was getting thicker and it would before long suffocate the evening light. He needed to find her soon if he wanted to be back on the road before it got too dark.

Her tracks reached the gate. Logan tried matching his steps into hers to save some effort but her gait came an inch or so shy of his and he gave up after a few awkward steps. He cursed, halted and looked around him. The place was a wreck. There was blast marks on the walls, even bullet holes, and a fire had gotten loose at some point. Logan’s heart sunk. That surprised him a little; he hadn’t thought he had harboured any hopes for the place. He looked around once more and grunted as he surrendered himself to the fact that the place was not going to lead him ahead. All that was left to do was to find her and get out. Maybe he would return to the old geezer and his prizefighters again.

_Right. Enough of that._

Logan looked down at his feet and wiggled his toes. He should have worn warmer socks but he was sure he would survive.

I found a wolf watching him as he looked up. It stood some steps ahead of him right on Grace’s tracks looking at him with its head low and tail slightly raised. It was a nice looking animal, a well fed bitch as far he could tell from its scent. The wolf kept an eye on him, not looking straight into his eyes but eying him with sidelong glances. He returned the favour, lifted his chin a bit before turning his head away and offering the animal his profile. The wolf responded by rising its head a little as it turned around and begun to jog away along the path Grace had ploughed into the snow. Logan watched it feeling slightly jealous of the lightness of the animal’s step. The wolf halted, glanced over its shoulder directly at him and opened its mouth, licked its lips and panted soundlessly. It looked ahead the tracks, then glanced at Logan again, and he knew it was asking him to follow.

_It’s gonna take me to Grace._ He had no idea why he thought so. ‘All right,’ he said to the wolf, ‘you lead, I’ll follow.’ The wolf bobbed it head down close to the ground and headed off along her tracks with an effortless jog. Logan followed the canine. The wolf took him around the remains of the main building and along its weather beaten walls. Most of the windows they passed were broken. Logan peeked through some of them. The rooms had been abandoned years ago. Some had their furniture still in place, some had been ransacked either by humans or wildlife and other forces of nature. Some where burnt, mere black holes with skeletons of office chairs and other furniture jutting through blown in snow and unrecognisable rubble. Logan wondered what had happened. The place had clearly burnt down, almost every room had some evidence of fire, but there where clear marks of explosions and small weapons fire too Some sections of the compound had been completely destroyed. It soon became even more evident that what ever intel Charles had was of no use to Logan. What ever had been here was now gone. He might have been able to find some clues if he had come there during the summer but now – anything that might had survived the fire and the elements was buried in snow. Something strange had happened here years ago, that much was clear, but Logan couldn’t see how that might help him at all. 

_What the fuck happened here? No way this was just a power plant._

The wolf had disappeared around a corner of a side building while Logan had been lost in his thoughts. He pushed his knit cab back and scratched his hairline. The snow reached over his knees now and he was beginning to feel hot from ploughing through it. The cap made his scalp itch. He scraped his nails along his scalp and through his hair with zeal and grunted contently. He pulled the cap back down when he was done and followed in the wolf’s footsteps. He enjoyed the silence of the place. There was something tranquil to ruins, a mixture of stillness and a sense of past; everything was said in past perfect. The serenity of ruins felt comfortable on his skin. 

_They are, I guess, a bit like me,_ he pondered, _Old, wrecked and forgotten. Blown to pieces but still a thing._

He had lost the sight of the wolf and he loped after it. He enjoyed its quiet presence too, the camaraderie between animals. The wolf had got more further ahead than he had thought and he called softly after it: ‘Hey, darlin’, wait up. Don’t do this to uncle Logan, will ya.’ He cleared a pile of concrete rubble by the corner of the building with one leap but lost his balance when his foot met a patch of ice hidden under the snow. His right leg skidded taking his weight with it and he fell awkwardly backwards. His reflexes took over and tried to save him from falling over head first on the rubble. He knew his rucksack would have buffered the blow even if the fall could have caused him serious damage; with the adamantium and the healing factor falling over was never anything to worry about. 

He hit the ground left elbow first. Small burning stars flew across his visual field and sharp pain shot through his arm leaving his fingers numb. He drew a sharp breath, cursed wholeheartedly wishing there were more dirty words in his disposal. 

‘Are you alright? That looked like a nasty fall.’

Logan jumped to his feet, clenched his fists and let the claws out. He felt the steel cut through his right hand knuckles but nothing in his left hand. The arm was still out, muscles still limp and without feeling. No matter, an arm short he was still trouble enough.

‘Watch it, bub,’ he growled as he shook snow from his eyes, ‘I might stumble on you next.’

The female voice laughed. ‘Settle down, Logan, it’s just me.’

His left arm was coming back online and he pushed his knitted cap away from his eyes with it. ‘Fuckin’ hell, Grace, it ain’t smart sneakin’ up on me like that.’ He retracted the claws and dusted the snow from his clothes. 

‘Well, that was kinda the point, mo charaid,’ Grace answered. Logan watched her holster the hand gun. 

‘Was that for me?’ he said. He made sure there was no ice under his feet. The gun was back in the holster, he reminded himself. 

‘I wasn’t sure if it was you. What exactly are you doing here anyway?’

The gun was in the holster on her thigh but her hand lingered just slightly behind her hipbone with her shoulder relaxed down and back. She was ready to pull and somehow Logan suspected she would be fast enough. ‘This is like some goddam High Noon,’ he said jokingly, ‘I went to see you at your place, but Pete told you were out here.’ He wasn’t worried about the gun. Maybe it would mend something between them if he let her take a shot or two at him. 

‘Pete told you where I was?’

‘Yeah. He told me to bring you something but I dropped it there.’ He pointed at the bundle half buried in the snow where it had dropped it as he fell. ‘Mind if I pick it up for you? No foul play, I promise, love.’

‘Sure.’ Her shoulder relaxed and she walked closer as Logan leaned down to pick up the bag. He shook the snow from it and offered it to Grace. Logan backed up few steps after the bundle was in Grace’s possession. 

‘It might be best if we headed back to your place,’ Logan said as he watched Grace examine the contents. ‘Your four-by-four might still make it through the snow.’

Grace closed the bag. ‘No, it’s too deep already. We might get through the first few miles but never all the way back to the highway. I’d rather be stuck here than in a car.’ She turned around with the bag in her left hand. Logan knew she was keeping her right one free on purpose. 

Logan did not try follow her. He wasn’t sure if he was invited to do so. Grace turned around and looked at him. ‘Didn’t you have something to talk about? You said you went to see me at the cottage.’

‘No. I just –.’ Logan looked back towards the main gate and the cars. She was right. There was no way he was getting away from here tonight. He turned his attention back at her. ‘I just wanted to see how you’re doing. If everythin’ is all right – with you,’ he confessed.

Grace smiled. ‘Come on. I have something cooking. I’m sure there’s enough for both of us.’ She began walking along the already partly covered tracks. ‘I found a decent old room to hole in for the night. It’ll keep the wind and snow out for the night. We’ll think what to do in the morning.’

Logan watched her walk ahead. Where had the wolf gone? There was no sight of it anywhere as far as he could tell. Had it really been guiding him to her? It was snowing heavily and Logan realised the falling snow would soon hid her from him and he started wading after her through the snow. The snow reached well over his knees now and his weight meant he sunk deeper into it than she. _I seriously need to get me a pair of snowshoes_, he reproached himself, _I’m too heavy for this shit._

  
* * *

‘Can I ask you something?‘ Logan said after they had finished the meal and there was hot coffee in his mug.

‘Sure, ask away.’ She had tea in hers, as always, dark and with a scent resembling sweetgrass. Logan thought he might ask if he could have a taste of it.

Logan added two logs to the fire. ‘Back at the cabin when you had found me, how come you took me home?’ He realised that made it sound like she had brought home a wounded fox. ‘I mean you offered to kill me, then healed the wound, fed me, let me sleep in your bed and all that shit even after I had made sure I would – you know.’ 

She smiled at the fire. ‘That must have been strange, I know.’ She lifted her head and looked right at him across the flames. There was a strange look in her eyes, a warmth of remembrance that he thought was uncalled for. ‘I recognised you the moment I saw you lying where I found you.’ She realised how she had put it and she took a gulp from her mug as she regrouped her thoughts. ‘I mean I knew you had Soldier blood in you right away. It’s pretty obvious because of your built, you know.’

‘Yeah, I’ve noticed.’ He let her have a moment of silence. He didn’t want to push her. He reached for the enamel pot next to the fire and refilled his cup. He offered to pour more tea for her too. She held out her mug and smiled in return. 

‘You are one of my own, my kind, my responsibility. You fall under my jurisdiction under the Code.’ Her voice was soft, caring even, and she took a sip of her cup. He watched her lips press against the rim of the enamel mug and followed how her upper lip moved as she tasted the liquid. 

Logan’s face hardened. ‘Pete told me about that, but I ain’t yours. It wasn’t you who manufactured me.’ He pronounced it like a swearword. ‘I have no fuckin’ clue what this code you keep talkin’ about is, but it does not apply to me.’ He sounded hard and he knew it. He had noticed the feelings her lips and hands and voice had stirred in him and he wanted to nip them in the bud; they were leading into thoughts he didn’t want to think.

‘But it does,’ she said quietly. ‘Every Soldier everywhere, on every planet, ship and station falls under the jurisdiction of my kind. Just because I didn’t –’ she paused to find a suitable expression ‘The fact that you were not born into my barracks doesn’t excuse me from my responsibility. You have the genes you have and that in itself is enough.’

_Planets? Who the fuck are you?_ Logan stared at her for a while from a cross the fire before he realised he hadn’t said it out aloud. ‘Planets and ships? Who the fuck are you?’ His hands were trembling faintly. They hadn’t done that for a long while and he knew had to be getting closer to the edge again. He had though he had finally conquered the rage, that he had it under control. Her scent reached his nose past the smell of wood burning, and he knew nothing had changed. Logan laid the mug down on a piece of fallen concrete and fought the urge to storm up and at her. (His hands imagined grabbing her shoulders.) He clenched his hands into fists and squeezed them so hard he could feel his nails dig into his flesh. The smell of his own blood helped a little. He could hear himself growl in a low pitch. ‘Grace, I’ve been listenin’ this shit long enough, from Pete and from you. Who the fuck are you?’ He had meant it to sound serious and determined, but he knew he sounded more threatening than anything else. 

Grace stayed absolutely still for a while, motionless, relaxed, all at ease there on the other side of the fire. Then she suddenly put her enamel mug down and moved over to his side, right next to him, well with in the reach of his claws. She held out her hand, laid it down right next his knee as an offering of something Logan didn’t quite understand.

Logan pulled away a bit. ‘Watch it, Grace,’ he warned pointing at her with his left index finger. ‘Just answer the fuckin’ question, Grace.’ _I don’t want to hurt you again. Please._ He could feel the old rage beginning to simmer in him. Where the hell did it come from? He didn’t feel enraged. Frustrated, yes, but not enraged. The feeling did not seem to come from his mind but from deep within his body as a familiar heat warmed his gut, and he liked how it felt. He always liked how it felt. It felt nostalgic, comforting. _Christallmighty, please go away._

Grace pulled her hand away and stood up; she must have realised how close to loosing it he was. She added few more logs to the fire and returned to her spot opposite to his. She got lost to the flames for a quite a while but for some reason that did not fuel his anger. Her vacant stare helped him relax and the heat of the rage receded. The fire began to consume the newly added wood and Logan moved a bit further away from its heat. It was all nice though, the dry heat of an open fire nuzzling up his limbs and face, and he found himself exhaling contently as he leaned his back against his rucksack. 

Grace smiled privately. ‘You are right, mo charaid, you deserve answers. Especially you of all the people on this world.’ She glanced at him, straight into his eyes through he flames, and then looked up at what sky was visible through the cracked ceiling. It was still completely overcast and snow was still falling. 

‘You remember how I’m afraid of the stars, don’t you? You asked me about that once, remember?’

‘Yeah. Why?’ Logan didn’t look up. He kept his eyes on her.

‘I was born there, between the stars, a long, long time a go,’ she said and looked at him. The flames flickered in her eyes. 

‘In a galaxy far, far away,’ Logan completed the sentiment and laughed. ‘Or on a fuckin’ mothership, right?’ he continued, ‘Journeyn’ across the galaxy in a desperate search for a new homeworld. Darlin’, I saw that movie too.’ 

She laughed with him. ‘On a goddam mothership, that’s true,’ she said through the laughter before turning serious again. ‘Oh, you should see it. There’s nothing like it. But we are not looking for a new homeworld. We have plenty of those. All magnificent and full of life. All out there,’ she waved her hand across the sky, ‘all out there. Among the stars.’

_She’s dead serious about this shit. She ain’t lyin’_. ‘What the hell are you doin’ here then? Invadin’ us? Checkin’ out what kind of an enemy we would make if you came in with force? I’ve seen that movie too.’ Then a thought hit him: ‘Are you fuckin’ infiltratin’ us? Is that why you look so like us? You fuck even smell like a human.’ Logan didn’t know at which point he had stood up. And he certainly had no idea at which point he had decided to believe her story.

Grace remained sitting. ‘No, we are not an invading army or a group of spies. We look like you simply because we are you. We are just as human as you, I mean, the sapient population of this planet is. No, wait, that would include the dolphins and the whales too. Shite, you know what I mean, don’t you, Logan?’

‘Dolphins? What the fuck are you talkin’ –.’ _Oh, wait._ He wasn’t a pure human. He was a crossbred bastard between a human and that shitty something that she was. How could that be if she was a human too? ‘I know what you mean,’ he said and sat down again. ‘So if you’re tellin’ the truth here then how come you have space travel and we, them, fuck, Earthlings don’t?’ _This is ludicrous._

She thought about it before she answered: ‘How much science fiction have you read?’

‘What?’

‘Scifi books. Have you read any?’

She seemed serious. ‘I dunno. Several, some. Okay, a lot but what the hell about it?’

Grace laughed softly. ‘Nothing wrong with that. I read quite a lot of that stuff and I actually have travelled between stars. Half of the books are not bad at all. Sometimes it’s surprising how accurate they are.’ She scratched her brow. ‘Right. Do you know what a seeder ship is?’

‘Sounds familiar.’ He tossed away what coffee there was in his mug and refilled it with her tea. It had a sweet taste to it, not sugary or anything like that, just sweet. The tea smelled like dried hay but he didn’t taste it in the liquid as he drank. (He liked things that surprised his sense of taste.)

‘There are different kinds but, listen, this will sound unreal, I know, but bear with me.’ She finished her tea and put the mug away. ‘Distances across the galaxy, between the stars and star systems are almost impossible to travel. It takes decades at the minimum, even with standard FTL, to cross them.’

‘FTL?’

‘Oh. Faster than light. There are engines that can reach faster than light speed, but there are limitations to their carrying capacity and it takes massive amounts of energy to run them. FTL engines are nifty but not the way to spread you species across the voids of the universe. You need huge, enormous freighters for that and they are slower, a way much slower. It takes about 1600 Earth years for a freighter to travel here from the closest fully developed homeworld. So we use seeder ships.’

‘So you are invaders.’

‘Yes and no. We never seed planets that already support sapient cultures of sufficient level of complexity and technology, but those are rare finds. Most of the suitable worlds we discover are open. We prefer planets with certain – physiological characters: oxygen, water, suitable sunlight and the overall composition of atmosphere but if we come across a planet that has potential but is not quite there yet, then we terraform it.’ She put her mittens on. Logan hadn’t even noticed she had been barehanded until then. ‘It doesn’t always work, like it didn’t with your Mars, but given enough time and loving care it usually does.’ She sounded regretful.

Logan felt like he had been lost in the translation. ‘Mars?’

‘Aye, you are living in a very, very special planetary system, you know. You have two rocky planets within ideal distance from a perfect star. We intended to terraform and seed both planets but there was some – problems with Mars and it failed. Pity, it would have been a beautiful place to call home. It still is a handsome world in its own right,’ she said looking up as if seeing the planet hanging there above her head, ‘It had rudimentary life still remaining when we first arrived, had had for aeons, and we tried to nurture it, to grow it into something more substantial – but it wasn’t to be. It was too little too late.’

Logan shifted into more reclined position and extended his legs along the perimeter of the heat radiating from the fire. He wasn’t sure at all what to think. It all sounded like so fantastical, unreal. Something a fiction writer might conjure up in his head. 

‘It does sound a bit daft, I know,’ Grace said as if knowing what was going on in his mind.

‘No shit.’ Logan rubbed his face with his hands. ‘I need a fuckin’ drink.’ He knew he should have brought something along.

‘Sorry, can’t help you there.’

‘Nah, don’t worry about it.’ Logan leaned his head back on the rucksack. _To hell with it._ He might just as well let her tell all about it. ‘Tell me about the seeder ships.’ If nothing else it might turn out to be an entertaining story, and he had all night to kill and no better ways to pass it. _Not with her._

She didn’t continue right away. Logan waited patiently. The rage had receded but not died out. It lingered deep in his gut, a slow burning, but one that could wait; He wasn’t going anywhere tonight. All that heavy snowing meant that the road was impassable by now. Though it wouldn’t be much better in the morning. Most likely they would either have to walk all the way to the highway or wait a day or two hoping someone would come and clear the road up to the dam. 

‘Seeder ships are true behemoths. They can travel for centuries without much outside resources as they search for a planet that fits the bill. Then when they find one, one like Earth or Mars, they reanimate their crew from stasis thought they can function perfectly well without any supervision. A seeder ship is not just a spacefaring vessel but an intelligent entity, a sentient being of a kind.’

Logan laughed and Grace asked: ‘What?’

‘Nothin’. Go on.’ _This is absurd._

‘Right,’ she said but did not sound quite as confident as before and it didn’t escape Logan’s notice. ‘When a seeder ship finds a suitable planet, it and its crew begin to mould it, gently, towards the desired goal. We adjust the atmosphere –,’ she halted in mid sentence and Logan caught a whiff of uncertainty and hesitation in his nose and in her voice. ‘We – also adjust the life already existing on the planet. We add suitable traits and – retract undesired ones and – recreate species from our database.’

_Fuckin’ science fiction_. ‘What did you recreate here?’ 

‘Several things.’ Logan could feel her nervousness all the way across the fire. He sensed it as a constriction in his own chest and it made him feel ill at ease. What the hell was she talking about? It all sounded so unbelievable, so far out, that he didn’t know what to say to it. So he said the only thing that came to his mind.

‘So you’ve been here millions of years?’

‘What? No,’ Grace said sounding surprised, ‘That would be absurd.’

Logan sat up and looked directly at her. Grace looked uncertain. ‘You talk of fuckin’ FTL’s and seeder ships and that sounded absurd to you?’ He let himself fall back down. Logan sighed. ‘But if you say that you recreated humans on this planet then you must have arrived several million years ago. There’s the fuckin’ fossil evidence of the whole fuckin’ process.’ He was starting to feel frustrated. ‘How do you explain that?’

‘I didn’t say we recreated humans. The genus of humans already existed when our first seeder ship arrived here almost 200 000 years ago. They didn’t have to do much terraforming, the planet was pretty much perfect. All they did was to introduce some modifications to the existing humanoid gene pool. Those changes created the modern Homo sapiens, humans as you know today. It’s not that complicated,’ she explained apologetically, ‘all it takes is the right alterations and time, quite a bit of time, I give you that –.’

‘Explain me this,’ Logan interrupted, ‘if you arrived 200 000 years ago, like you said, how the hell can you look like us if there already was humans here?’ Logan knew he this would have been the time to have a headache had such pain been possible for him.

‘My original species doesn’t look _exactly_ like this.’ Logan glanced at Grace and she blushed. ‘It’s an adaptation to the situation but it’s not too far off though. It’s more a question of proportions and – such. It’s not like we have four arms and six eyes. It’s just – not quite like this.’

‘But you said we’re the same.’ Logan did not want to argue but did so anyway. It sounded and felt so fucking stupid, to be honest, but then again, there was a pile of stupid shit going on in the world right now. He, for one, was definitely not an average human being. Maybe he had come from the stars. 

‘For the most part of the gene pool we are. Think about dogs: no matter how different a poodle and a wolfhound look, they are still dogs. Every – breed of us on different planets is an adaptation to that planet’s particular conditions, especially to atmospheric pressure and gravitation.’

‘Right. We’re back to dogs for reference.’ Logan studied her features. She had a roundish face that narrowed down towards her chin. Her lips were full but not overly so; rather well proportioned considering the width of her mouth he thought. Her eyes were dark brown (that he remembered well from his dream memories), so dark that it was difficult to distinguish the pupils from the irises. She did not seemed to mind his scrutiny, only adjusted the scarf around her neck. Logan stood up and walked to her. ‘You know this all sounds like bullshit to me, don’t you, darlin’?’ he said looking down at her. She shrug her shoulders and allowed him to sit down next to her. Logan stared into her eyes, inhaled her scent but did not find any traces of insincerity in her. Either she was telling the truth or what she honestly believed to be the truth. He raised his hand to touch her cheek, halted an inch before the contact to see if she would object before caressing her slightly blushed cheek with the back of his fingers. The blushing, he trusted, was form the cold and not from his proximity. 

‘Didn’t you think it was strange to find humanoids here, somethin’ so close to yourselves?’ he asked while his hand found her earlobe and his thumb traced its contours. She let his fingers find their way under her cap and he gently pulled few strands of her hair free.

‘We did, even more so when we found out that we were so closely related. We already were practically the same species. All it took to close the gap were some minor adjustments.’

Logan lifted his left hand too and turned her head from side to side, slowly, with his both hands under her jawline. She definitely looked all human. ‘What did you make of that?’

‘It’s still being debated. There are theories but that’s all there is to it. As far as I know Earth is the only place where this has happened so far. But that’s as far as I know. There might have been developments I’m not aware of.’

Logan turned her face towards his. ‘You’re pretty good lookin’ girl to be 200 000 years old.’ He couldn’t help grinning devilishly. She smelled so good and a part of him wanted to rub himself against that scent. He knew he couldn’t but he trusted he could curb what ever desires she might summon in him, and he indulged in her scent and the images it conjured. Something rumbled in his throat. He thought of the red head at Xavier’s mansion and redirected some of his feelings there.

Grace laughed. ‘I’m old but not that ancient. None of us where here at the beginning.’

‘When did you arrive?’ Logan had caught a glimpse of her teeth when she laughed. She had a perfect set of teeth, too perfect, but then, it occurred to him, she too must have been engineered. Hadn’t Pete said that she has been genetically modified? Why would she have anything less than a perfect set of teeth?

‘About 3000 years ago. We came to see that everything goes according to the plan. We are here to oversee the last stage.’

‘The last guardians,’ he joked. The image of the red head didn’t help, it made it worst. He stroke her upper lip with his right thumb pressing the lip gently upwards. Her mouth was soft and moist and her teeth glimmered briefly in the firelight. ‘I would love to have you under me,’ he said to her in low voice.

Her jaw between his palms tightened and he realised what he had said. He withdrew his hands and stood up without a word. The mutilated room around them felt tighter than before, and he stepped quickly across the pile of rubble separating her side from his. Logan sat back down on his spot that the fire had kept warm and assumed the supposedly relaxed pose from before. He wasn’t fooling her, he had no illusions about that, it was more to reassure himself that nothing had just transpired, that everything was still okay.

_You fuckin’ bastard. You keep your fuckin’ dick in you pants and your fuckin’ hands to yourself._

‘What about the Soldiers?’ he asked trying to sound indifferent and failing miserably; there was a low tone to his voice that he could not hide. ‘It doesn’t sound like you would need an army to accomplish what you came here for.’

Grace didn’t reply for a quite some time. ‘I have forgiven you, Logan.’

Logan closed his eyes. _Yeah, right. Forgiven me what?_ ‘I asked you about the Soldiers. All this terraformin’ and spaceship shit is fine but I asked you about the Soldiers.’ 

Another long silence. ‘All right then. The Soldiers.’ There was strange tinge to her voice, a mixture of pride and far-reaching sadness. ‘The universe is a big place filled with life and not all of it is benign. There are things out there that want to tear this planet and others apart, to destroy and then colonise. There is a war for survival raging across the stars and we are all part of it. Even here, on Earth.’ Logan opened his eyes and found her staring at him. Grace stood up. ‘We created the Soldiers to be exactly that, a weapon against our enemies, one of our weapons, but we have used you elsewhere too,’ she said while circling around the fire. ‘We have used your kind, Logan,‘ she said as she kneeled down next to him, ‘I have used your kind to manipulate battles and wars among humans so that the result would benefit our cause and tilt the balance to our favour. I have ordered your kind to fight and slaughter and murder here and on other planets. I have led you into battles that have turned into massacres the moment we stepped in. I have ordered you to cause pain on others and my actions have resulted in the suffering of my Soldiers and therefore – you see, Logan, don’t you – you are my responsibility, my burden. What ever you are, even you personally,’ she hissed as she jabbed her finger agains his chest, ‘I am partly to blame.’ 

Grace drew a deep breath and sighed. ‘None of you can die but you all can be killed. It’s just very, very difficult to kill you in battle. You live for such a long time, mo charaid, and your lives are filled with death. I am also your deliverance, your saving grace and angel of death. Those of you who do not die in battle come to me when their time is full, when their hearts have emptied themselves, and I will let you go. With my sword.’ Something close to a sob escaped her lips. ‘What ever you do, your kind, I cannot be your judge or judgement. Not even to you, Wolverine. Not even to you.’ He waited for a tear to fall down her face but nothing happened. ‘The sword has to remain an act of compassion. Without it it’s merely an execution.’

Pete had told him all this but hearing her say it made it different. ‘How many have you killed?’ The fire was ebbing and the coldness had crept closer.

‘Eight thousand three hundred and twenty-six. So far. There will be more.’ She turned around and sat right next to him, side by side with her hip gently touching his thigh. Logan reached over and grabbed few logs that he placed carefully into the fire. He adjusted them so that the draft through the hole in the wall would feed the flames before sitting back next to her.

‘You knew them all?’

‘Almost everyone. There are some that belonged to Marshals who had fallen in battle. They wanted to follow their leaders into death.’

Logan said nothing to that. He watched the smoke rise from the fire and followed it curl up through the hole in the ceiling. It had stopped snowing. Maybe tomorrow someone would come and plough the road and he could just hop into the car and follow his own path. _Fat chance._

‘Pete told me about you back at the mansion. About you and Soldiers and how we all belong to you.’ 

‘He did?’ She sounded surprised.

‘Yeah, I know he shouldn’t have.’ He threw a sidelong glance at her but she was staring into the flames again. ‘Don’t be too hard on the boy. He did what he thought was best.’ He saw Grace nod in agreement.

The silence between them had become comfortable, a new tranquility that allowed Logan to relax. The fire ate the wood, turned it slowly into embers and ash, and he kept feeding the flames._ You always knew you were a weapon, nothin’ more._ Time flowed in silence and he had no idea how much of it passed by. Grace remained there, by his side, within his reach but lost in a private world closed to him. 

Logan studied his hands. He opened and closed them several times, each time more slowly, more deliberately. He pushed the claws out, extended them into their full length despite the pain that always followed. ‘I thought for along time that I needed to pass on the pain I had been put through,’ he said eventually. It had to be well past midnight, more likely close to three o’clock he thought. He pulled the claws back in and watched the wounds heal. ‘I thought I had the right to pass it along to anyone I chose to, but I was wrong, you know, Grace.’ He turned halfway towards her but she did not mirror his movement. It didn’t matter. He turned back towards the flames. ‘I deserved all I got, you know. I had it comin’.’ He heard her draw a deep, dragging breath as she listened to his words. ‘I owe you. For all the pain I put into you. It’s not your fault, love, you know. It’s just who I am.’

Grace turned her head away and for a moment it seemed that she would move away from him. ‘I haven’t forgiven you for your sake, Logan. It’s the only way to maintain the balance,’ she said instead. Logan thought he understood what she meant. 

‘I’ll be off in the morning,’ he said hoping that the knowledge of his departure would make her feel better. A quiver run through her and to his surprise he realised his words had startled her. ‘Grainne, love, you okay?’ He put his hand on her shoulder, close to her neckline, in a kind, protective gesture that was unfamiliar to him. He almost pulled it back but he felt her relax under his touch and he left the hand there. 

‘Fine, I’m fine,’ she said barely audibly and gathered her legs under her in preparation to stand up. He gripped her shoulder.

‘Wait, I aint’t done.’ He hadn’t meant to sound as harsh as he did. She looked at him with a frown. ‘I don’t want you to kill me anymore so don’t feel obliged to do so. Doesn’t it free you from that Code if I say that, right? I don’t want you to kill me.’

Grace looked puzzled, even offended which he hadn’t expected. ‘Why do you say that?’

The question made him uncomfortable. ‘That deliverance you offer, I don’t deserve that from you, and you got enough pain of your own on your soul already. I’ll find another way. It’s not your concern anymore.’ He couldn’t undo what he had done, but this was pain he could take away from her, pain from which he could spare her. 

‘But –.’

‘But nothing. It ain’t your choice.’ _Let me do this one thing for you._ Logan stood up and pulled her up with him. He drew her in close and secured her face between his hands. He rested his forehead against hers and held her like that for a moment. They were almost of the same hight. He liked that.

‘I don’t know if anythin’ you said is true but –.’ He feared she would pull away from him, but to his relief she didn’t even try. He feared he wouldn’t have been able to let her go (he wanted to have her). ‘Listen, love, I remember how you looked when they first gave you to me. You looked so strong, beautifully fierce, and they let me believe you would heal like me. I knew I could do what ever I wanted with you.’ He lifted his head and looked at her. She had her eyes closed and he smelled fear. He pulled her even closer in and closed his arms around her. ‘No,’ he whispered, ‘just listen to me.’ He held her in silence before continuing. He still smelled fear. ‘Nothin’s gonna happen now, you have my word, love.’ _Why do I keep callin’ her that? _

He remembered how she had looked when she had stood at the centre of the cell when they had opened the door for him for the first time. ‘You seemed so fierce. You fought me with such force. I had to have you.’ _I still want to have you. But not like that._ It had taken days to beat her into submission. He remembered those days particularly well considering how well he remembered in general. He remembered the feeling, the air about that cell well. There was nothing good about it, nothing but lust and hunger, more like a compulsion than anything else. _Now why the fuck would this be any different?_

‘I don’t remember much,’ he heard her say with her head buried into the thickness of his duck down parka, ‘but there’s this one time.’

Logan swallowed. ‘Yeah?’

‘You had me pinned down, like you always did with your knee on my back. You weigh so much that is was hard to breath. You even broke my ribs a few times. I never knew if you did it on purpose.’ He didn’t remember either but he probably had done it on purpose. He opened his arms and let her go. She refused to look at his face. 

‘Why was that time different?’ 

‘You used to grab me by my hair, every time.’

‘I remember. I liked your hair.’ He pulled her cap away and combed her hair with his fingers. ‘It was so thick when they gave you to me.’ He remembered tearing off tufts of her hair at first. He questioned briefly the logic of that, of destroying something he liked so much. She pulled her head away from his touch and he let the hair slip through his fingers. He suddenly remembered he had used to keep a lock of her hair in his pocket all the time back then. He let his hands fall down to his sides. ‘Tell me, what changed?’

‘What you just did, you did it then too. You stroke my hair, you didn’t just grab it, and then you said something. I don’t remember what.’ She looked at where his belt buckle was under his coat. 

‘I don’t remember either,’ he lied._ I have no use for words. I can have what I want without them._

‘You did say something that time, in a gentle voice. You sounded sad. I think that for a moment you saw thing as they were.’

Logan remembered it well but could not bring himself to admit it aloud. ‘Maybe I did but it changed nothin’.’ There was a dream he almost remembered. Something about her and the cell and him. Not like the other dreams he had of her, something different, but just beyond his reach. 

‘You did change after that.’

‘But you said you didn’t remember more.’

‘I don’t have clear memories about it, I was in a bad shape by then. I remember being happy about the light when you came in. It was all darkness otherwise. I remember the lamp hanging from the hook by the door.’ She looked briefly at his face. ‘You became – less severe after that.’ She paused and looked straight at him with a confounded expression in her eyes. He knew she had remembered something new. ‘One time you just sat there by the wall the whole time you were in there. You didn’t touch me at all, you just sat and stared at me. I even fell asleep at some point and when I woke up you were still there by the wall. That was really scary.’ She squinted her eyes trying to remember more. 

_That was scary? Me sittin’ and doin’ nothin’ was scary. What about all the other shit I did to you?_ Somehow he was sorry he didn’t remember anything much about that time; it left him without means on knowing when his penance would be paid in full.

Grace shivered and Logan took a step back. ‘It’s getting cold here,‘ she said.

‘Oh, I thought – right.’ Logan rubbed his hands nervously against his thighs and looked around. ‘We’re runnin’ low on fire wood. That pile won’t last the night.’ Logan turned back towards Grace. ‘I’ll go and get us some more.’

‘Don’t bother,’ Grace replied and stepped away from him. ‘I have a heater with me. It’ll be much more comfortable than the fire.’ She opened one of her bags and pulled out something resembling a Coleman lantern. She placed it roughly at the centre of the room, maybe a yard away from the fire, and touched a button on its side. A gentle glow appeared. ‘What do you think, plus ten degrees okay?’ 

‘Ten degrees?’ As far as Logan could tell the lantern didn’t seem to shed any light at all. It merely glowed gently.

‘Celsius. That’s, what, 50 in Fahrenheit.’

‘Shouldn’t it be more like 500 degrees Celsius to keep us from fuckin’ freezing to death?’ Logan said kneeling down and studying the little apparatus closely. It did look a lot like a Coleman lantern but there was nothing behind the glass globe where the burner ought to have been. ‘Ten degrees won’t even heat the glass.’

Grace smiled. ‘I meant the ambient temperature, not the temperature at the source. It doesn’t work like that, you see. It heats up a specific amount of space around it directly and not by radiating heat like a fire does. Would ten degrees be enough for you? We can have it set to any temperature but I think ten would be fine for a winter’s night.’

Logan picked up the lantern and turned it around in his hands. It was rather light though bottom heavy and he couldn’t see anything else strange about it except for the missing burner. ‘This is your technology, right?’ he asked and put the lantern back down on the ground.

‘Aye, it’s ours. Don’t ask me how it works. I only know it runs on battery power but I never bothered to learn the finer details. Ten degrees?’

‘Fine,’ Logan grunted. ‘It’ll be like the tropics.’

Grace laughed softly. She touched another button and the glow strengthened. The room begun to heat up quickly. The coldness behind Logan’s back where the radiating warmth of the fire couldn’t reach begun to dissolve and it was soon warm enough for him to open his parka.

‘Nifty gismo.’ 

‘Isn’t it, though it doesn’t have the aura of an open fire.’

‘True.’ Logan stood up. ‘How about the fire then? We just let it burn out?’

Grace stood up too. ‘We don’t have to. We could keep it burning for the ambience if you want to.’ She looked at him.

Logan avoided her eyes. ‘Na, fuck that. I ain’t goin’ to get up every half an hour for that.’ He cleared more space for his sleeping bag. The concrete floor under the rubble was still intact. All he had to do was kick aside most of the debris. Few larger segments needed some more effort but he soon had a comfortable space cleared out for himself. Grace had already cleared up a nook for her bedroll earlier before he had shown up, and by the time Logan was done with his bedding she was already snuggled down in her sleeping bag. 

Logan eyed her thoughtfully before taking off his parka and sitting down on his bedding. He unlaced his boots and arranged them neatly side by side next to the foot of his sleeping bag. He took his jeans off, pulled the shirt off leaving only the T-shirt on, and folded all of them carefully over the boots. 

‘That,’ Grace said suddenly as Logan was setting down inside his sleeping bag, ‘is something so unlikely for a guy like you.’

‘What?’ He really was baffled. She sounded lighthearted; all the earlier darkness and gravity was gone.

‘You keep your stuff so neatly together. Not something people would expect from someone with your appearances.’

Logan rested his head down and stared at the ceiling. He felt slightly offended by her comment on his looks, but she was right. ‘No, I suppose not.’ He did like the structure it created in his life; a little order that was all up to him, under his control and no-one else’s. He turned to his side face towards her. ‘Don’t try to wake me up if I have a nightmare,’ he said while trying to find a comfortable place for his shoulder, ‘I don’t want to end up stabbin’ you.’ Grace didn’t reply and when he lifted his head to see if something was the matter, he saw she had already fallen to sleep.

Logan rested his head back down. 

_Funny thing._

_There’s always the scent of snow present when I sleep with her._

He realised how he had worded his thoughts and felt embarrassed by how much it disturbed him. He could see her face from behind the heater’s glow. 

_Without the heater,_ he thought just before the sleep caught up with him, _it might have been best to sleep in the same bed._

_It’s fuckin’ freezin’ out there._


	17. Daybreak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Listen, love. I need you to fight for me. Give me a chance and I will get you out alive.’ He let his forehead come in contact with her hair. ‘Fight for me. Screw those Soldiers and Codes and fight for me. I owe you. You need to let me pay it back. You need to let me take it all back.

_He didn’t know when the dream had changed. There had been something before, a different dream before this, of something mundane, trivial, of ordinary life. He couldn’t remember anymore. The dream he was dreaming now had taken over and it had consumed everything else. It had devoured everything just like it always did. Just like it devoured him._

_It was all familiar, even the fear was familiar, and there was a certain comfort to the familiarity of the dream. All these dreams were the same. Everything always happened in the same order; the sequence never changed. And while it did make the dreams more terrifying as he knew what to expect, it also was, in a weird, twisted way, a comfort too: there was no exceptions and no surprises but safety through consistency._

_It always began here with him being tied down onto a steel grill in a large operation theatre with a set of blindingly bright lights hanging over him. Eight of them. He had seen the dream so many times that he had had time to count. He knew every nook and cranny of all that was visible to him. He knew when a certain orderly would come in. He knew he was naked, he had looked down along his torso and legs once before his head had been bound down. He knew there was no insignia on the green garments of the staff and that one of them had three ballpoint pens in his pocket and another had a pea whistle hanging around his neck. There were x-ray images on light boxes mounted up on a wall. Possibly pictures of him, some somehow looked like him, but others were clearly of a person far lighter than him, thinner boned and all. By now, after about fifteen years of dreaming, he knew he would instantly recognise the place if he ever saw it in the real world. _

_By then the orderlies had him immobilised and there was nothing he could do but to submit. In the beginning he had tried to fight them, he still sometimes did, but it changed nothing: he would still end up being strapped down on the grid. The fighting only made it worse. He lost control then, got enraged, then desperate, and it would all end in sheer panic that left him screaming for mercy as they injected him with something his body could not fight off and which left him paralysed. He hated that, the vulnerability that left him open to any pain and any humiliation the dream presented, and so he opted for cool stillness hoping that it would keep him from loosing it and to safeguard what little illusions of dignity he still harboured. _

_The staff changed and a new set in green garments and black rubber gas masks surrounded him. They poured pain on him. He couldn’t see what they were doing to him because his head was bound down but he could feel the cuts, the incisions as they sliced into him and all the way down to the bones. He felt how his body tried to mend itself, how to it tried to close the wounds, but the surgical team kept the flesh open and did not let the sides of the incisions meet. He felt how the blood gushed out of him as they pushed something into him through the cuts and that was when he screamed, he always screamed then. _

‘Logan, stay awake.’ 

_Something had changed. He had never understood anything of what the people in these dreams said. Something was different. Something had changed. _

_He felt a hand on his forehead and it made him twitch._

‘Here, I’m over here, Logan. See me.’

_He tried. There was someone standing next to his head. Someone new who had never been there before. Someone standing there almost beyond his field of vision. _‘Who?’_ he managed._

_The figure moved a bit and he was able to see it more clearly. It was just another surgeon in his green overalls. He spat and cursed at him._

‘No, Logan, see me. Look at me, carefully, and see me.’

_He tried again and suddenly there was space between him and the pain. The pain was still there, he still experienced it, but somehow it was not quite there in him, not within him anymore. He tried harder and figure became more focused. _‘Who are you? Who the fuck are you?’ _Blood spilled from his mouth as he spoke and he had to cough. They were working through his lungs now._

‘Look, look carefully.’ _The figure reached for something and brought up his hand. He stared at it from the corner of his eye. It felt strange to have his hand free. He was never free in this dream. It almost didn’t feel like his hand at all. It scared him. There was always fear in his dreams but the dreams had become so familiar that he was not afraid of the fear anymore but accepted it. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore, just fear to experience and nothing new to terrify him, nothing until now. He watched the figure bring his hand closer to its face and if he had been able, he would have shrieked upon the touch, but there was too much blood in his mouth and he merely gurgled almost inhaling the warm liquid. He managed spat most of out._

‘Logan, see me. Can you see me know?’

_He had never been so afraid in his life, so terrified, scared stiff. The fear and blood made it hard to breathe. He did what the figure told him to do and let his hand rest on its face. The moment he felt the skin under his hand he recognised who it was._

‘Grace?’ _He could see her now, standing there in full surgical gear except for the gas mask. Had she always been there? She had to have. There was no other explanation for it. His dreams never changed. He knew every nook and granny, every nook and granny. She must had always been there. She kept on holding his hand._

How come my hand is free?

_Somewhere in the distance the pain was turning into anger. There had always been some intrinsic anger in him, a hereditary trait of fury, and now that aptitude for ferocity was the nucleus around which the pain gathered and crystallised into rage. He had been fearsome before; after the operation he had become something even more impressive. _

‘I knew you were here when this happened,’ _he said spurting out blood from his mouth as he spoke, ‘_You did this to me, you lying piece of shit.’ _He was still afraid, so scared, and he desperately wanted to see what they were doing to him, but the rage and hatred were now outgrowing the fear. He focused all his attention on her, on her figure, on her flesh and how he would rip it into pieces as soon as he would get off of his shackles. _‘I should’ve torn you into pieces in that cell! I should’ve fuckin’ killed you! It was all on you!’ _The last sentence came out as a mangled scream that spewed warm blood from his lungs on her._

‘No, Logan, this is your dream. I am in your dream but I wasn’t there when this took place.’

_Something burned into his left leg just below the knee. Pain shoot up his leg and up through his stomach, but by the time it reached his consciousness it had turned into rancour. ‘_You did this to me. You deserved all I did to you, bitch, and I’ll come for seconds.’ _He spat more blood at her. It stained her face and he growled at her. Then the pain shoot up his leg again and he screamed. He knew he had lost the fight; only pain would exist now that he had lost the fight. He managed to sob between the screams._

‘Logan, stay awake. Stay with me. I need you to stay awake within this dream, don’t fall deeper into it.’ 

_She leaned in closer to him and he spat at her again. There had to be something in his lungs, something piercing them and keeping him bleeding internally. _‘I’ll get you, you piece of shit. I’ll be comin’ for you. I’ll make you wish I had killed you in that cell!’ _The pain made him grind his teeth together. The pain was closer to him again, more real and more familiar, not quite inside him yet but it was creeping closer by the second. He tried to grab her with his hand that had somehow been freed, but she saw it coming and stepped a side. Then the hand was again held immobile by shackles as if it had never been free at all. He howled at her, he felt how all the pain channeled through him and turned his scream of hatred into a screech._

_Then she was there again, holding his head between her hands. _‘Logan, listen to me. Look at me. This is your dream I’m in and not the real thing. This is your memory of the bonding. Remember it and stay awake.’

_He fought against the restraints with all his strength but they didn’t give. Her hands remained on his cheeks. He yelled at her, shrieked so hard that he felt how it strained the muscles of his throat and neck to their limits. The struggling made his lungs bleed harder and for a moment he felt like drowning in his own blood. The surgical team didn’t seem to notice. The blood filled his mouth and surged through his nose. He panicked, tried to force air into his lungs, but all he got was warm, thick blood. His body spasmed violently. The convulsion arched his spine and neck. Someone stuck a needle into the side of his throat, the spasm loosened, and he was able to breathe again._

_Grace was still holding his head. _‘Remember the snow, Logan. Can you smell the snow, mo charaid?’

_He inhaled between the bursts of insane, stellar pain. There was something strange in the air that flushed his lungs. It was too cold and sharp. He bit his teeth together to keep himself from screaming and stared into her eyes. _‘Shut the fuck up, bitch. Stay out of my head.’

‘Smell the snow, Logan, and stay awake. Stay with me.’

_He inhaled again. The air was so cold it bit into his lungs. I_t wasn’t like this. It was hot, fuckin’ boilin’._ He inhaled again: the air smelled of snow. The distance between him and the pain returned and the rage begun to loose it momentum.‘_Grace?’ _He was disoriented, his own body felt unfamiliar. _‘Snow. It smells like fuckin’ snow in here.’

_He saw Grace smile at him. ‘_Stay calm. Hold on to that scent and stay awake in here.’ _She stroked his cheek reassuringly and he knew he was still dreaming._

‘Were you here?’ 

‘No, not in here where this took place, but I am inside your dream now. We are still in that ruined room at Alkali Lake. You are still dreaming. It’s cold outside but the heater is keeping us warm.’

_The pain intensified and left him gasping for air. He forced himself to breathe through his nose and the scent of snow pushed the pain into the background. ‘_In my dream?’ _He felt his body shudder as the pain from the surgery tore through it but it all took place somewhere in the distance, somewhere in the landscape of his dream. He kept his eyes locked at her. It helped to keep the pain at bay._

‘You are having a nightmare and your yelled in your sleep. That woke me up. You told me not to wake you up if you had one, remember.’_ Logan nodded. He did remember but it still didn’t make sense. Grace stroked his forehead. ‘_Remember that time when I kidnapped your body?’ _He nodded again. He didn’t dare to speak. He feared he might loose the scent of snow if he did that. _‘This is something similar. I delved into you again but this time were are dreaming the same dream.’

_The thought alarmed him. _‘You shouldn’t see this,’ _he panted though his teeth, _‘Get out. You shouldn’t see this.’

‘No, let me see this. Finish the dream.’

‘No. Get out. The pain. I don’t want – you to see this.’ _He was ashamed by his weakness._

_She climbed on top of him. It didn’t seem to bother the surgical team. She seemed weightless as she stood there with legs astride his chest and looked around before looking down at him._ ‘Who ever it was that ordered this to be done to you is in this room. He, she, they,’_ she said thoughtfully, _‘certainly would have wanted to witness the process.’

_Logan drew in a deep breath. The scent of snow was like honey to his lungs now. _‘Grace, please, please go. I don’t want you to see what they did to me.’ _Another deep breath. _‘I don’t want you to see me like this. Please. Go.’ 

_Grace looked at him. She looked sad. _‘I already know what they did to you. I have seen it done before.’ _She climbed down and disappeared from his field of vision. He heard her footsteps circle around his head and shoulders. _‘This is not the way to perform the bonding. You should be unconscious. This is crude,’ _there was deep loathing in her voice, _‘and cruel, unprofessional. We need to find out who did this to you.’ _She reappeared on his right. An orderly walked past her showing no awareness of her presence. Her eyes followed him. _‘They were here that day and they are hear now. Logan,’_ she whispered in his ear, _‘dream the dream through. I’ll be here too and I will find out who where here that day.’_ She wiped blood and sweat from his face with her sleeve. _‘Be brave. And strong. Dream this dream through one more time.’

_Logan nodded though he didn’t really know what she meant by one more time. Then he remembered what would come next. _‘They’re about to sink me into the tub, Grace.’ _He intuitively reached for her arm, _‘don’t let them do it.’ _The feeling of drowning was the worst. Pain he could take, pain was nothing. A piece of cake. A walk in the park._

‘I’m sorry. Pain I can ease but – there’s nothing I can do about what happens in the dream.’ _She combed his hair with her fingers. _‘You have to dream this dream through. Remember the scent of snow from now on. Hang on to it. It will be there even under the water. And I’ll be here with you all the way through.’ _She kissed his forehead, then stepped back and disappeared from him again._

‘No! Don’t let them do this!’ _He panicked as the steel grid begun to sink into the green liquid taking him under with it. He kept gripping her arm. _‘Please, Grace, stop it!’ _Some green liquid splashed into his mouth and he coughed. _‘Please,’ _and then he was under._

‘This is the last time you will dream of this. I promise,’ _he heard her say before the liquid got into his ears. He was still holding on to her arm when he realised the liquid now smelled of snow. Not of his blood and of the chemicals and of bile, but of snow, white snow in the mountains far up north._

It’s changed,_ he realised as the liquid turned brown as his blood spilled into it, _the dream has changed.

She changed it.

  
* * *

Logan woke up leisurely. He turned to his side and buried his head deeper into the bundle of clothing he had for a pillow. It was all good: comfortably warm inside his sleeping bag and nicely cool outside giving him a chance to appreciate the warmth. Had he been sleeping in a bed he would have turned onto his stomach, tucked both of his hands under his hipbones and his head partly under the pillow. He used to sleep like that, on his stomach and hands locked under him, a long time ago.

Logan opened his eyes. He did remembered sleeping like that, remembered the feeling of safety and the depth of relaxation. He never slept like that any more, never in a position that would in any way hinder his ability to defend himself. It had to be an old memory from his most distant past, from before he had become who he was now or who he had been when he had first met Grace. Maybe it was a memory from his childhood? He laid still and thought about his childhood. He remembered nothing about it, nothing at all, not a single toy, no feeling, no hurt nor hug. That shapeless void in his mind left him feeling adrift. He did have two clear harbours of memory where to dock himself: the memory of the adamantium bonding (as Grace called it) and the memory of meeting her for the very first time in the cell, but neither were harbours he much cared for and anyhow, while the memories were clear, he had no sense when exactly, how far back in his past those events had taken place. The two memories were too loose to offer a secure anchorage. 

_Floating docks._

_It would be nice to remember even just one birthday from when I was a kid._ Other people had those memories. It felt bitter to hear them talk about them.

_Fuck that._ It was comfortable now, right now, at this moment. _Fuck the past. And the future. Carpe diem and all that shit._ He knew it to be true: there was no point in lingering in the past or in imagining the future. All that really mattered was the present and this present at hand was comfortable, pretty good even. _Let the past lie. Let it go._ He was fucking immortal (practically) anyhow. He had all the time in the world to do anything he wanted to do. Maybe someone would eventually invent time travel. Apparently somebody had invented faster than light travel and that was supposed to be impossible. 

So why the hell was he still stuck here in the snow?

He turned onto his back and kept his eyes closed. It was warm inside the sleeping bag and the ground was not too hard or lumpy. He had spend good money on the mat and it was worth every fucking buck he had put into it. No way he was getting up before he absolutely had to. He opened his eyes and grinned as he stared at the concrete ceiling covered in crackled paint above him. _Some bacon would be nice. Maybe she’ll fry some._ There was a dusty blue line painted on the ceiling some inches away from the wall and circling around the room. Logan followed it with his eyes. An unusual feature, he thought. _Never seen one on the ceilin’ before._

The panic fell upon him without warning. It hit him like a sledge hammer, made his soul disappear into an abyss that imploded within him. It didn’t crawl up his legs or begin as a whisper of doubt in his mind. It hit him with full force without a second thought. His chest collapsed and air was suddenly too thin to fill even his compressed lungs. His heart accelerated. It raced so fast it skipped a beat here and there. His muscles tensed and he felt light and transparent – disembodied, dissociated. Then the fear flooded in, an indescribable, abhorrent, sheer fear that fell over him and into him causing a second implosion inside him that took with it everything that was left of him. It all took only a second: one moment he was there feeling rather good and comfortable, the next he was crawling up to his knees with his hands shaking and a whimper escaping his lips. He managed to pause himself there, managed to contain his reactions, trembling on his knees and gasping for air. The last time he had felt like this had been years and years ago while driving alone somewhere up in the North. Back then he had bolted and run until his feet had given up. _Not. This. Time._ He wanted to scream, to let the panic flow through him freely, to let go and to surrender to the void it had created inside him. _No chance in hell. It ain’t safe enough here. Anywhere. I need to get somewhere safe first._ He fought for breath, nearly hyperventilated as he scrambled to his feet. He almost fell over managing only barely to steady himself. He heard footsteps. Someone came up to him from behind, grabbed him by the shoulder and he spun around as he screamed and lashed out with his closed fist. The blow landed and he fell down following his falling assailant. Only then did the claws come out as he fell on top of his enemy with his hands wide apart and ready to surge down.

Logan came to his senses when his knees hit the ground. Somehow the impact that shook his bones reconnected his mind with the reality and for a moment he sat there bewildered with his hands still halfway into the blow intended to impale what ever it was that was threatening him. The panic subsided and he looked down. It was Grace lying under him. Blood stained her temple where his out-lashing fist had landed, and her arms were thrown aback and open.

_‘There’s so many kinds of fear and none of them is good.’_

_Allmightygod. Not her. Not this fuckin’ shit again._ He withdrew the claws and scrambled off of her. She was breathing, he could hear her draw air in and he could hear her heart beat unsteadily but defiantly. He wanted to grab her but he knew better. She had been lucky. _He_ had been lucky. Had his fist landed directly in a right angle on her temple and he would be holding her lifeless corpse in his arms now. The panic had made him miss. (He had never thought he would one day be thankful for his panic attacks.) It had made him move too soon and his knuckles had only bumped against her head, and even more miraculously the claws had not been out. A mere scrape this time, but with his strength, with the adamantium and the extra boost from the panic, even that indirect bump had probably cracked her skull and caused damage to her cervical vertebrae. He wanted to pick her up but knew enough not to: she was still breathing, but that might not last. 

He _had_ killed Marie. Yeah, she was still alive but only because of her particular mutation. _He_ had killed her and _she_ had saved herself. Had she been anyone else, she would be dead now too. 

_Grace can heal herself too,_ Logan thought. _Unless I hit her hard enough and she really is unconscious._ He leaned in even closer and inhaled her scent. Her scent changed when she was healing herself. It added a touch of something resembling frankincense into her scent, something a bit more mellow and with a hint of citrus. He smelled nothing but her. He leaned in even more, as close to her skin below her ear he dared to. Nothing. He exhaled emptying his lungs as thoroughly as he could and inhaled again, carefully, deeply, savouring every molecule that passed through his nose. Still nothing. Logan closed his eyes and stayed there with his skin so close to hers that he could feel his stubble graze against her. He had hit her hard enough. She was unconscious, most likely in a coma. 

_She won’t survive this one._

He jumped to his feet and let the frustration and rage and fear escape as he roared until there was no air left in him. He drew more air in and clamoured again. He cursed at the walls spitting out every foul word in his vocabulary. Then he fell down by her with his claws extended. He stared at the still glowing heater unable to look at her while what little life was left stubbornly lingered in her.

_‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’_

He forced himself to turn his eyes at her. She looked peaceful. People in coma almost always looked peaceful. He reached for her face with his hand, realised the claws were out and withdrew them as he withdrew his hand. 

‘I’m sorry. I am sorry. I never meant it to be like this.’

He stayed there, on his knees, waiting for something that never happened. Grace kept breathing and her heart kept beating. Eventually he dared to reach for her hand. Her skin was burning. Fever was running through her. The force of his fist had injured her brain and her body was trying to survive without the help of the damaged areas. The body did what it could, what its limited knowledge allowed it to do, and so the fever had set in. He hovered his hand above her brow. She was burning up.

_Look at her,_ he told himself, _This is what you do. Death itself indeed. _

_There has to be a way. _

Logan cleared her hair away from her face. The hair was like silk, exactly like that day he had first met her. He braced his palm on the ground above her head and leaned in lips close to her ear taking care not to accidentally move her. 

‘Listen, love. I need you to fight for me. Give me a chance and I will get you out alive.’ He let his forehead come in contact with her hair. ‘Fight for me. Screw those Soldiers and Codes and fight for me. I owe you. You need to let me pay it back. You need to let me take it all back. I –.’

Logan stood up and looked around. She and him kept going about in these ridiculous circles of violence and near death. Over and over again. _Karma, bub, that’s life for you._ He sighed and looked out through the hole in the ceiling. It was full day already. He had slept late. He didn’t remember when he had last slept so late. It wasn’t snowing anymore but he heard wind blowing outside. He walked away from the heater until he felt the cold bite into him as he stepped outside the device’s range. Still way down below freezing. Logan returned to her. The fever was maintaining her body temperature but only for now and he wasn’t even sure if it was a good thing: a lower body temperature would help to fight the damage spreading though her brain tissue. He wondered if he should turn the heater down and let her body get colder, but he decided against it. He didn’t know enough about this stuff. A bit too cold and she would never wake up again.

_They say freezin’ to death ain’t a bad way to go._

_What the fuck does anyone know about dyin’?_

_Except me._

He didn’t have much time and he could not move her. There was no choice. The help would have to come here to her. Even if he could have moved her, all the roads between the ruined base and any civilisation had at least a foot of new snow on them. There was no way out. He had to get help in.

_She probably has a radio._

He stared down at her on the floor. 

_This is the moment when everythin’ changes._

_If she has a radio and I call for help, they will come and get me too._ It would be a really simple scenario spreading about them. A woman beaten into coma alone with a man who, let’s be honest, really didn’t have that air of innocence about him. _I could wait until they are almost here and then split._ He knew that would never happen. To ensure his escape he would have to leave well in advance as the snow would slow him down and the tracks would lead to him. There was no way he would leave her alone for that long. 

_Not anymore. _

_If ever._

_I could just let them take me in and make a brake for it later._ It wasn’t like any local cell would held him. He could do that, let himself to be caught by the local Mounties. There was nothing to it. Simple. Foolproof._ Let them hold me until I hear she’s safe. Maybe until I know she comes through._

_It might be too late for me then. _

He knew whoever it was that was hunting him would find him if he stayed too long in the system. It would take days before the doctors would know if she would make it or not. It could well be that by then he was no longer around to hear the news. They would get to him as soon as they possibly could and that’ll be it. No second chances. They would have learnt from their mistakes.

_Me for her life._

_Fair trade._

He strode across their little camp and begun to tear through her gear. It took awhile and he paused every now and again to check on her. Her body temperature was dropping but slowly. He spread his sleeping bag on her to keep the warmth from escaping too quickly. He didn’t find a radio but he found what he thought was a satellite phone. A number appeared on the screen when he turned it on. He didn’t recognise it, the area code was not familiar. It made him realise he had no idea what to dial. Did the 911 work with satellite phones? He had no idea. He redialed the number on the screen. 

_Fair trade._

It took some time for the number to connect. Logan moved over to Grace while he waited. Her breathing was shallower but still steady.

‘Grace?’ A male voice that sounded familiar.

‘No. It’s Logan, but I have her here.’

There was a pause at the other end. ‘Have you hurt her?’

Logan bent down and touched her cheek with his fingertips.‘Yes. I did –.’

The man cut in: ‘You fucking piece of shit. Is she alive?’

‘Barely. You need to get here ASAP if you want to keep her that way.’

The man cursed again. Logan could taste the want to kill him in the man’s voice. ‘We know where you are, Wolverine, you and her. We are coming in weapons hot.’

Logan couldn’t resist the temptation. ‘Aren’t you afraid I might finish her off if you come in guns blazin’, Nick?’ he asked sardonically. He had finally recognised the voice.

‘I’m sure you will. I’m pretty sure you already have. Otherwise you wouldn’t have this phone.’

Logan sat down on the ground next to her. She looked so peaceful and her hair was so beautiful in the blueish glow of the heater. 

_A full circle. We have come a full circle, you and I._

‘Logan, I know what you did to her in Afghanistan,’ Nick said when he didn’t reply. ‘I saw what you did to her. When she forgot, I remembered.’

Logan smiled softly. ‘I remember too. So that was in Afghanistan?’ Nick didn’t answer. ‘Listen, you need to get your ass down here right now. She doesn’t have long but she’ll live if you get here fast enough. And Nick?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’ll be here too. You think you know what I did to her in Afghanistan? Think again.’

‘You fucking piece of shit.’ The coldness in the man’s voice was something Logan knew intimately.

‘You keep thinkin’ about that on your way here. I might still surprise you.’

‘I will have your head for this, you fucking piece of shit, Wolverine,’ the man on the phone promised in a low voice.

Logan growled. ‘No, you won’t. But I’ll have yours if you don’t come in time.’


End file.
